Black Iris
by Quietly Something
Summary: Now a promising student at a prestigious art school in Tokyo, Rin Tezuka struggles to become an artist at any cost. (A neutral-ending Rin epilogue.)
1. Las Meninas

**Las Meninas**

Rin decided that if she were a color, she would be brown. Not brown like chocolate, more like the light kind of brown on a piece of wood that has been sitting around for a few years and has started to lose some of its polish, but not all of it.

She leaned over the table and sipped coffee out of a stirring straw, eyes aimlessly scanning the other patrons at the coffee shop. There were at least two dozen of them, most of them too focused on something to notice Rin staring at them. Those that did stared back, but only out of curiosity at her lack of arms, which was so common that she barely noticed it. For a little while, Rin tried to guess their colors, but before too long she gave up trying. You couldn't really know a person's color if you didn't know anything about them. It was a hard enough task if you _did_ know them.

A few weeks earlier, one of her professors had told her that the human eye could see ten million colors, which was every color she could ever see or think of. If she tried to give everyone on Earth a color, she'd have to start repeating them before she even got through everyone in Japan. That didn't seem right to her, and the thought of it made her stomach all twisted up.

Rin spent a while just sitting at her table in the back of the shop, thinking about colors. Someone's color was the shade of brown of a piece of wood whose polish had worn off just a little more than Rin's shade of brown. She wondered what that person was like, and if she would ever meet them. If she did, would she like them? This train of thought occupied her for a while.

After some time- a concept which Rin had mostly lost touch with a while ago- Rin's mother walked through the doors of the shop. She quickly set eyes on Rin and stared at her for longer than usual, making an odd squinty sort of face.

The two of them hadn't spoken in a while. Rin started to feel sick.

Mrs. Tezuka was a tall, aging woman with a soft face- if she were a color, probably a light green, or possibly a pale yellow, though Rin found it difficult to judge with her. She was rather beautiful for her age, with long red hair the color of Rin's that hung down over her shoulders. She seemed to have aged a bit since Rin had last seen her, or at least her face was sagging a bit more. But most notable was her eyes, wide and green and wrenched open like a cat's. Rin had always been told that she had her mother's eyes, a prospect she found both confusing and a little creepy.

Rin frowned and looked at the floor. She was trying not to say that kind of thing out loud anymore.

"Oh, sweetheart, you look like a twig," Mrs. Tezuka said with a sigh, pulling out a chair at the end of the table. "Please make sure you're eating enough…"

It sounded like a simple request, so Rin simply nodded in response. "Okay." She could tell that her voice was a little hoarse, and she silently wished that her mother would ignore it, unlikely as it seemed.

Mrs. Tezuka slid into her seat across from Rin, her eyes tracing over her Rin's face in that funny way like she was trying to see the skull underneath the skin. Her hair flowed down over part of her face, flaying a little at the ends. Rin didn't want to say anything, so she looked away from her mother and examined the tabletop instead.

After a while of saying nothing, Mrs. Tezuka breathed loudly and clapped her hands together. "I'm just going to lay all my cards on the table, here, Rin. I don't feel good about the way things ended between us last time we spoke." Her tone made Rin shoot her eyes up.

This sounded like a complaint. Of course, Rin didn't feel good about the way they had left things, either, but she rarely did after a conversation with her mother.

"Sorry," said Rin's mouth, with little input from her brain.

"I- huh?" Mrs. Tezuka stopped short, taken completely aback by the apology, before continuing. "No! It's not your fault. Oh, Rin…" She placed a hand on her forehead and rapped her fingers along her hairline, making a strained face like she stubbed her toe. "Look, I just wanted to say. I shouldn't have called you ungrateful. That was wrong of me, and I'm sorry. Okay? I owe you that apology." She hesitated for another moment. "I love you. Your father loves you. You know that. And… we didn't send you to Yamaku to torture you. I'm sorry that you didn't have a good experience there. We just- I want you to be able to find somewhere you feel like you belong. At Yamaku, I thought maybe you might be able to find someone… like you. You know?"

"I know." Rin's head felt kind of fuzzy, which made her want to stop listening. Her mouth kept saying things she didn't want to say, which was happening to her more and more lately.

"Are you mad at me?" Mrs. Tezuka asked with a little pout.

"No." Rin wished she actually knew the answer to that.

"It's stupid for us to fight, anyway." Mrs. Tezuka grimaced and patted her hands on the table. She kept making faces that Rin didn't understand. "I just worry about you, that's all."

"I know."

"I'm glad." Mrs. Tezuka batted her eyes and breathed loudly again. "You should know… we're so proud of you. For moving up here, and taking advantage of this opportunity, and everything. It's a very mature thing to do. You have no idea how happy I am that you wanted to do it."

"Good."

"How have you been doing so far?"

"Fine."

"Have you made any friends?"

"Sort of."

Mrs. Tezuka wrinkled her nose and hesitated to speak again. "Are there any boys you like?" Rin flinched at the interruption to the silence.

"Yumi's boyfriend is nice." Rin was surprised to hear her mouth say this.

"Oh, well, that's good! Not exactly what I meant… but all the same, I'm really glad you and Yumi get along."

"She talks a lot."

"Your dad told me after he dropped you off that it seemed like the two of you would be friends. I mean, Emi was a real chatterbox, and you were friends with her, right? So…"

"Yes." Rin closed her eyes and tried not to think about it.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm okay."

"You're not saying much."

Rin thought for a long time about how to respond to that before muttering, "I don't have much to say."

"You're just not really acting like yourself."

Rin opened her eyes just in time to see her mother shuffling her hands around like she had an itch.

…So, Rin wasn't acting like Rin. "I know that," she said quietly.

Mrs. Tezuka rolled her eyes, playing with her hair with one finger. "You're going to make me worried about you…"

"Don't worry about me." Rin's mouth mumbled that last bit. After she spotted her mother's concerned frown, it repeated itself more loudly. "There is nothing for you to worry about."

Tapping on the table with two fingers, Mrs. Tezuka sucked in her breath before responding to that. "Okay, listen. I know you don't want to see a therapist, so I'm not going to ask. Just… hear me out. I got you something." Holding out one finger in the air, she reached into her jacket pocket and retrieved something pebble-shaped that fit in the palm of her hand. Looking Rin in the eye, she set it down on the table and lifted her hand from it dramatically, revealing it to be a small cell phone. "It's prepaid through to next year. It's really important to me that you have this. I know you won't use it much, but _please_ , promise me… if you're struggling with anything… _please_ call me. I'm here for you. Really. I will always be here to listen if you want to talk. About anything."

Rin stared at the phone, stone-faced. It was yet another request from her mother, but this time not such a simple one. Rin couldn't think of anything to say, but her mouth spoke up again anyway. "Okay. I'll call you."

Her mother always had so many requests. Rin thought that was something funny about her, how she constantly asked for things like she knew exactly what she wanted.

"Thank you. Thank you." Mrs. Tezuka nodded twice, her eyes closed. She looked sad, but Rin couldn't understand why. "You said you've been getting along with Yumi… so she can help you with it if you want to use it. But even if she's not around, you can just dial with your toes and put it on speaker phone, right? I've seen you do more complicated tasks than that."

"I can do it."

Of course, Rin didn't want to do it, but she knew that it didn't matter what she wanted, and that it would be pointless to talk about it anyway. Besides, Rin never _really_ knew what she wanted anymore.

"I know we're not always on the same wavelength. And I know you're not going to believe me when I tell you this. But I know what you're going through, I really do. I was your age once. You've got a world of pressure on you, and no direction." Mrs. Tezuka traced her hands above her head in an arc like she was drawing a rainbow, or possibly a fat snake. "You're doing the right thing. I am so proud of you for taking the initiative with the scholarship here. If you keep it up, I promise things will only get easier. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Promise me you're okay?"

"I promise."

"I love you."

Rin hesitated again at that. Her head was still kind of fuzzy, and the feeling spread to her ears, like invisible gnats were buzzing in them.

"Do you want to see where I live?" asked Rin's mouth.

She wondered how much time had passed while her mother had been waiting for her to say something.

"Really? Yes, of course!" Mrs. Tezuka shook her head, mouth gaping slightly in shock. "I really thought I'd have to beg and plead you to get you to say that… it really… that means a lot, Rin…"

Mrs. Tezuka crinkled her face like a squirrel, putting her hand to her mouth. After a brief pause to suck in her breath, she stood and stepped around the table, bending down a little to meet Rin's eyes. Lips curled into a weird, sad smile, she wrapped her long arms around Rin's neck and hugged her daughter closely. Her long hair tickled Rin's nose, which made her want to sneeze.

Rin stared at the table. She was terrible at hugging. That was the only thing she could think about.

* * *

Some time later, though Rin really didn't know how long it had been, Rin's mother led her through the halls of her dormitory with her hands cupped at her chest. Rin's long sleeves dangled at her sides, tapping rhythmically on the sides of her legs. Rin had dressed herself that morning.

"What's the number again? 308?"

"308," replied Rin's mouth.

"308, 308…" Mrs. Tezuka repeated the number again for no reason as she counted the doors in the hall. Spotting the small room at the other end, she stopped herself from knocking on the door to 308, evidently distracted. "So that's the kitchen for your hall? Do you ever use it?"

"No. Yumi does sometimes."

"Oh." Mrs. Tezuka nodded with a little pout, then turned and knocked twice on the door. "How do you open the door when there's nobody home?"

"I use the stool. I open it with my foot."

"…Oh."

Rin and her mother both went quiet. On the other side of the door, bare-footed footsteps slapped on the ground until a girl's shadow appeared under the door.

"Right here, Rin!" shouted Yumi as the door swung open. Momentarily surprised, Yumi blinked and looked back and forth between the two of them before settling on the elder of them for a greeting. "Oh, hey! What's up? You must be Rin's mom!"

Mrs. Tezuka laughed quietly. "The one and only."

"I'm Yumi Ono, Rin's roommate… obviously! So good to meet you!" Yumi leaned on the door to look at Rin, who returned the gesture by staring vaguely in Yumi's direction. Puffing out her cheeks, Yumi added, "…You guys gonna come in, or what?"

"That was the plan," declared Mrs. Tezuka, stepping past Yumi to take a look around the dorm room.

Yumi giggled a little bit and made a dramatic bow, allowing her to step inside, but Rin didn't follow. She had gotten distracted, and stopped in the doorway to look at Yumi instead.

She was nice to look at, Rin thought, with long hair and stormy eyes and one breast that was just the littlest bit bigger than the other.

Rin hadn't painted people in a while. She had been painting the beach; her teacher told her to paint an environment. So she painted the beach, for no particular reason.

"Wow, this place is huge!" Mrs. Tezuka said loudly, walking around in circles. "Way nicer than the dorm I stayed in during my freshman year back in college."

"Yeah, no kidding. It's super nice having all this room to paint in," said Yumi.

Eventually Rin wandered into the dorm room, closing the door behind her with her foot. The room looked nice, too, but room-nice. Not people-nice. The walls were all covered in paintings, mostly Yumi's and a little bit of Rin's. Right above her bed, Yumi had hung up that famous sketch of the man with four arms and four legs but only one head and only one penis.

"Wow, is that yours?" asked Mrs. Tezuka, looking at one of Yumi's paintings on the wall. "Gorgeous!"

Yumi smiled from ear to ear. "Thanks so much! It's one of my favorites, that's why it's up there."

Above Rin's bed was a painting she did for the exhibition at Yamaku. Nomiya had told her to keep it. She didn't like looking at it, but Yumi said it was nice, so she hung it up. At the time that seemed like the thing she should do.

"Omigod, just wait till you see this." Yumi bounced on her heels, scurrying over to the closet door and swinging it open dramatically. "Walk-in closet! How cool is that?"

Mrs. Tezuka scoffed with disbelief. "Man… I have to say, you guys have it way better than I ever did…" She stepped into the closet and disappeared from view.

Rin lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling. The ceiling had a funny pattern, with little grooves that trailed off in different directions like veins.

"What are these?" called out Mrs. Tezuka from inside the closet.

Yumi's voice came from the same place. "They're my watercolors! I've been experimenting with these lately. What do you think?"

"They're so pretty! You capture so much detail… I guess I had kind of thought that watercolor painting was supposed to be all blurry and abstract."

"No, not really, unless that's what you're going for. It takes a lot of time to get it right though. At least for me…" Yumi hummed loudly in-between sentences. "…But I'm really happy with the way those ones turned out. With all this space in the closet that Rin said she wouldn't use, I figured it was a good spot to let them dry up."

Rin wondered if the trailing veiny lines in the ceiling were intentional. The walls didn't have any funny designs of their own. They were blank white, like they were supposed to be a great big canvas.

"Hey, Rin?"

All of a sudden, Rin decided that she wanted to paint on the walls. Just to capture the thought. She fantasized about being able to get out of bed in a year and see a pattern on the wall, a thought she had had just now…

" _Rin_?"

But she wasn't going to paint on the walls. She had to finish painting the beach first. That was what she was _supposed_ to paint. Why she was here.

Rin thought about getting out of bed in a year and looking at her beach painting. She wanted to throw up.

"Rin, are you still with us?" Mrs. Tezuka put one hand on Rin's bed, looking over her sternly.

Startled, Rin sat up suddenly, her ears buzzing with the invisible gnats again.

"I'm still with you," said Rin's mouth.


	2. Girl with a Pearl Earring

**Girl with a Pearl Earring**

"…So with our class discussion in mind, what _is_ this, Tezuka?"

"It's the beach." Rin glanced back and forth between her professor and her painting, eyes narrowed.

"Pft, yes, I realize that." Chishiki crossed his arms, thinking for a moment. "But as we have discussed, I am speaking to the essence of your work right now. Think outside of strictly composition. What are you expressing here? _Fundamentally_ , what is it?"

Rin thought extremely hard about it for a few moments, so much so that it exhausted her. "It's a painting of the beach." She knew as she said it that it wouldn't satisfy him, but for all her efforts she could not find the answer he was looking for.

Quiet laughter echoed throughout the room at her response, and Chishiki put a hand to his forehead, moving slightly away from Rin to look at her better.

"Please, tell me, Tezuka. What time is it?"

Rin's eyes drifted slowly toward the clock in the back of the room. "12:37."

"And what time did class start?"

"11:00."

"11:00? Really? So you're telling me that based on a whopping hour and thirty-seven minutes of lecture that you've been sitting in on so far, the most valuable thing you can possibly think of to contribute right now is that this painting, which you've spent weeks working on, is _depicting the beach_."

Rin opened her mouth but closed it again a moment later. Every single person in the class stared at her in anticipation of her response, even though she had nothing to say. Half a minute passed, and she could hear her own breathing getting louder as the silence began to overstay its welcome in the classroom.

"Ay… okay. I'm not trying to embarrass you. Please take your seat, Tezuka." As Rin stalked back to her seat in the front row, Chishiki crossed his arms and turned to the desks in front of him, expression unchanging. "I don't want to single her out, because we all know that at least a third of you would be giving me the exact same response if you were unlucky enough to be up here today. But look." He picked up Rin's painting from its easel and set it down to lean against his desk. "I make you all do this glorified form of show-and-tell so that we all have something personal that we can connect to our class material. Not just so we can gawk at how good each other's shading is. Alright? Let's try to dig a little deeper, as artists." He watched Rin carefully for a moment, pressing his tongue into the inside of his cheek, then clasped his hands together. "Tell you what, let's shift gears a little bit. I don't want to distract from our presentations, but right now I want to look at my art pick for discussion this week. Just because it feels pertinent."

As he spoke, he moved to the end of the room near his desk and pulled out his projector, laying a laminated sheet on top of it and holding out his hand to gesture toward the screen hanging over the chalkboard.

On the screen was a dark-colored painting of a flower, one which spiraled inward and bled darker in the center. Rin bored her eyes into it, like looking at it harder would make it more valuable. Like, somehow, that would tell her what she was supposed to be getting out of it.

Someone sitting behind Rin mumbled that they had seen it before. The noise distracted her, and she gave up, sighing quietly and looking down to stare at the little wooden strip on the wall underneath the chalkboard.

" _Black Iris_ ," declared Chishiki, "by Georgia O'Keeffe, an American painter. Originally painted in 1926. Who is familiar?" Rin shifted in her seat and turned her head to watch as nearly a dozen scattered students raised their hands. Chishiki nodded at them. "Okay, please hold your tongues, just for this little aside. I want to hear from the others first." He thought for a few moments, eyes scanning the students in front of him, before settling firmly on Rin. "Actually, I would like to hear from our presenter, of so few words. Tezuka, what do _you_ think when you look at this? Please don't say 'a flower'."

A few students laughed at that.

Rin stared blankly into the black center of the painting. None of the good words, the ones she had been trying to remember, floated to the top of her brain. She stopped breathing for a moment, wishing she could leave the room.

Instead, she slumped her shoulders down and said the first thing that did come to mind. "It looks like a vagina."

A few people sitting at their desks behind Rin laughed, but Chishiki didn't seem to think it was funny at all, instead smiling broadly at the response.

He raised an eyebrow at Rin, waving a hand to silence the others. "You said you haven't seen this painting before, Tezuka?"

Confused, Rin's face drooped, and she looked up almost at his eyes. "No."

"Well, I'm so glad you said that. Because that's exactly what I wanted to talk about." Chishiki looked away from Rin again. "I mean, I realize that to some of you, it sounds like kind of a crass observation… but simply put, to many people, it does! It _does_ look like a vagina. Tezuka is certainly not the first person to make that observation. And it's a very valuable discussion to have." He raised his hand a little bit in front of him. "How about a show of hands? From the others who weren't familiar with this piece. Was anyone else feeling like this is a piece of sexual art, just from first impressions?"

Eight people behind Rin raised their hands. Was that right? Rin suddenly felt intimidated, like she had said something gravely wrong, but her professor paid her no mind as he continued on.

"Georgia O'Keeffe, like every human being on the planet, is a product of the time and the place in which she lived. Remember that this painting was created in 1926. In the United States, in many respects, the twenties were a time of broad, sweeping cultural change. This is a society hot off the heels of _scandal_ being a woman's ankle shown in public. Sex was a major cultural taboo. No matter where or when, our _art_ reflects the evolution of our _culture_. Sexual repression, and then, this. A loud, vibrant expression of female sexuality, and with it? A cultural upheaval, and sexual revolution," Chishiki declared, clicking his tongue. "…Well, here's the catch. O'Keeffe herself… _vehemently_ denied these interpretations. _She_ said that her critics _wanted_ it to be sexual. _She_ said it was projection. A perversion of her art. …So… so much for an American sexual revolution, then?" He shrugged, both hands pointed flat toward the ceiling. "Defenders of O'Keeffe have claimed that the sexual interpretations of her works were founded in male projection, and perpetuated the trend of men describing women as sexual objects. But at the same time, there were and are many feminist artists and art critics that felt that overt sexual expression in O'Keeffe's work was a sign of female _empowerment_. O'Keeffe herself? She said _Black Iris_ was a painting of a flower. So… who was right? Could O'Keeffe be wrong about her own art? At the same time, can we claim that so many others, who connected with this work in such a profound and meaningful way, were seeing something that simply wasn't there in any form?"

Chishiki walked in front of the spot on the wall where Rin had been staring, and her gaze suddenly fixed on his right leg.

He moved closer to the desks, changing his tone and getting quieter all of a sudden. "These are the kinds of fundamental questions I want us to be asking. To whom does art, and its interpretation, belong? Is it strictly the vision of its creator, or might it be something beyond that? Is there a _wrong_ way to look at a work of art? Many people are uncomfortable with the idea that _anything_ could be art, but at the same time, those same people don't want to say that there is a single correct way to evaluate what art is and what it means." He crossed his arms, rapping his fingers along one of them. "Now, I certainly don't claim to have the _answers_ to these lofty questions for you, but one of my primary goals for this class is to help us find some individual perspective on them. The way we personally view art as a concept is a fundamental part of who we are as creators, and as artists." Smiling to himself, Chishiki shot a sudden glance at Rin, pointing a finger harshly in her direction. "What do you think, Tezuka? Still think _Black Iris_ is a vagina?"

She looked him in the eye, helpless, and he frowned at her. Her lower body sank into her chair, like invisible hands were dragging her down to the floor under her desk.

Someone else interrupted the two of them, drawing away Chishiki's attention with their hand. He waited for a couple of seconds before turning to them. "…Yeah, let's open it to discussion. What do you think, Aoki?"

Aoki was a boy with long, unwashed hair that Rin had never spoken to. He sat up in his chair like he was afraid people weren't going to look at him otherwise. "I was just wondering, why are we limiting it to what O'Keeffe _said_ she had painted? I mean, couldn't she herself have been painting- er, representing herself in a sexual way… without her consciously realizing it?"

Chishiki snapped his fingers at the boy. "Ha! Well, we'll never know the answer to that, will we? But yeah, of course, of course. I'm sure Freud would have something to say about that- absolutely, yes, there is an argument to be made that what we create reflects the subconscious."

"Then… I guess I don't understand why there has to be debate? Can't O'Keeffe be right about what her conscious inspirations are without everyone else's interpretations necessarily being wrong?"

"…So, maybe _everyone_ is right, then? Even the people who disagree with each other?" Aoki hesitated for a moment, and Chishiki continued without waiting for him. "What if I'm, say, a botanist, and I tell you, the only reason you compare this image to a vagina is because you don't know what the flower looks like up close? Maybe this is simply a faithful depiction of a real part of nature."

Aoki scribbled something down in a notebook at his desk. Rin watched Chishiki as he spoke, trying desperately to hang on to every word he said- but the longer he went on, the more she forgot, until she got lost in a cloud of thoughts. It always used to be so much easier. But maybe that's what was wrong with her.

Rin blinked, her cheeks wet. Chishiki looked at her again, and stopped himself.

When he spoke, which it took him a little while to do, it was mostly to her, even though he looked toward the students in the back of the room. "…Alright, alright, you know what? I feel like I've been listening to myself talk forever. It's my class, my rules. Go on, go on. Go get some lunch. We'll just pick up with this up tomorrow. Tezuka, hang back for me?"

In a mob, everyone but Rin cleared out of the room, moving in the exact same way and with the same amount of urgency. She focused on the door as they cleared out, even as Chishiki approached her and took a seat in the desk next to her.

"I always think people are going to get trampled this close to lunchtime," he said quietly, patting a hand down on the desk. Rin turned her head to look at him, even though her thoughts were somewhere else. "Okay, so, what's going on with you? Do you want me to call somebody?"

"No," she replied instantly.

"Alright, well. If you change your mind, you don't have to tell me anything. I'll just dial a number and you don't have to talk to me anymore." He glanced up at the phone on his desk, laying eyes on Rin's beach painting, which was still leaning against his desk. "Look. You _clearly_ put a lot of time and effort into the painting you brought in today. That's all I ask for this assignment. All I'm doing is trying to guide our class discussion in the right direction. I promise I'm not going to fail you just because you weren't 'philosophical' enough."

"Okay."

Chishiki studied her face for a little while, but she didn't make eye contact with him.

"You know why I put pressure on you, right?" he asked, relaxing back into his seat. "The work you do sets a high bar for the people who evaluate you. You _obviously_ care about doing this right. That's a good thing, Tezuka. You should be proud of the fact that people already take your work seriously. God knows that's something I would have killed for at your age."

He waited for her to say something, but gave up shortly afterward.

"You know something?" he continued. " _Everyone_ who moves to the city, comes to an art school like this, wants to start a career out of what they're passionate about. And off the record? Very, very few of them are going to end up succeeding, outside of maybe the very local, hobbyist level. This is something that takes passion, and talent… and drive, and commitment, and a hell of a lot else. It's not something you see from a lot of people. But you- and yes, _you_ , in particular, have a _lot_ of promise. Seriously. You may not have been aware of this, but your name floats around with a lot of the faculty here. You impress people! You're here on a scholarship! And as I hear it, before you even applied, you'd already sold your art at a real exhibition, not just an art show. That alone gives you a huge leg up on a lot of your peers. And you absolutely _cannot_ waste that. Alright?"

The ends of Rin's hair clung to her cheeks.

She cleared her throat. "Alright."

"Alright, then." He patted his hand on the desk again and stood, making his way back to his desk. "You've earned the opportunities you have. You should be proud. I mean that."

He picked up the painting of the beach and set it back on its easel, appraising it.

With pursed lips, he leaned back on his desk, shrugging. "If nothing else, it really _is_ a nice painting of the beach. There's something powerful about that open space that extends all the way out to the horizon. Makes you feel kind of small." He snickered. "Am I trying too hard?"

Rin stood as well. Yumi, who had helped her carry the painting to the classroom, was out getting lunch. Rin didn't want to look at it anymore.

She turned toward the door, stone-faced. "Can you carry it out for me?"


	3. Red and White Plum Blossoms

Rin lolled her head back against her door, which was cold against the back of her scalp. A long white tube sock with blue stripes along the end hung from the doorknob, dangling down just far enough to graze her hair. She had been sitting there for nearly half an hour, though she hadn't been keeping time that well lately.

Legs flat on the ground, Rin lowered her head to stare at the wall across from her. Her shoes, which she had kicked off a while ago, lay strewn about at the base of the wall. Nailed to the wall above was a piece of art, one of many paintings by previous students that decorated the halls of the dorm.

Rin stared at it for a long time, trying to make sense of it. It was a series of overlapping blue squares- all turquoise, teal, and Prussian blue- jumbled together arbitrarily, like someone with square feet dipped them in paint and walked around on the canvas.

A little laminated plaque to the side of it read:

 _Lonely Pond_

 _Himari Nakamura_

 _2002_

But it didn't look like a pond to Rin.

She shrank back against the door, and her head slumped forward. Her bangs, wild and scraggly, fell down over her face, and she shook her head to brush them out of the way. Her hair was longer than it used to be, and she was still getting used to it. Yumi had her own strange way of brushing it.

Rin stared at her toes for a long time. Her toenails were too long; they hadn't been cut in weeks. She'd never asked Yumi to cut them. Her parents had been doing it most recently, and before them, Emi.

Rin shivered and took a long, shaky breath. A few minutes passed in silence.

Eventually, the door opened behind her, and her head fell back again, hanging over her back so she could stare up at the figure looming in the doorway. It was Kichiro, Yumi's nice boyfriend, wearing tight-fitting clothes and looking tired and disheveled.

He looked straight down and frowned at Rin as he made eye contact with her. "Uh… hey there." With one hand, he pulled the sock from the door handle and tossed it back inside the room.

She blinked once and tilted her head down, her bangs hanging slightly over her eyes again. "Hello."

He put one foot through the doorway and leaned against the frame, looking Rin up and down. "…What are you doing, Rin?"

She looked down at herself before whipping her head up. "Nothing."

They briefly looked each other in the eye, and Kichiro watched her from his spot just in front of the door, pouting slightly.

He gestured toward her feet. "Really? Because it looks to me like you're sitting outside the door, staring at your toes."

She blinked, drooping her head down to look at her toes again. "…That _is_ what I'm doing."

"Then why'd you say 'nothing'?"

She stared blankly at him as he smirked to himself, unable to think of a response. Why _had_ she said nothing? She knew it wasn't true, but she'd said it anyway…

Briefly closing her eyes, Rin wished that she _had_ been doing nothing, so she wouldn't have to think about it.

After a pause, Kichiro wandered out the rest of the way into the hall, reaching the opposite wall and leaning back against it to look down at Rin. "Look, I, uh… I feel weird about putting you out like this. My roommate is seriously _never_ around. I swear we will use my room next time." He scratched behind his head, gaze drifting to the floor. "It's totally my fault, though; I hadn't even thought of you being there. We were just-" -he stopped himself- "-I mean, you don't need the gory details or anything, but we were just hanging out in the room, and… it was just kind of a heat of the moment thing…"

"Okay," she replied quickly, voice flat.

He cleared his throat, covering his mouth with a closed fist. "…Hey, are you hungry? Yumi and I were going to go out for a little while and grab a bite. If you want, you are more than welcome to tag along."

"I don't know."

They exchanged a brief glance, but before Kichiro could respond, he was interrupted by a cheery voice from inside the dorm room.

"What's going on out here?" Within moments, Yumi's face appeared in the doorway, and she stepped through, crossing the hallway to stand next to Kichiro and half-hugging his arm.

He gestured toward Rin with one hand. "Your roommate has just been sitting out here waiting for us so she could be let inside."

"Oh… geez." Yumi peered back at the doorway to examine the thickness of the door frame, frowning uneasily. "I, uh… hope these walls are soundproof…"

"They aren't," Rin replied immediately.

Yumi widened her eyes and gritted her teeth at that. Kichiro grinned with amusement at her reaction, his fingers slowly intertwining with hers. Rin watched intently from the floor, knotted sleeves hanging at her sides.

After a few moments of awkward silence, he leaned in, raising the finger of his free hand to interject. "…Um, so, I suggested Rin come eat with us."

Yumi shot him a look and nodded affirmatively. "Yeah! Good idea." She swiveled her head around to look down at Rin, who was still planted on the ground. "You should tag along, Rin. Would be fun…!"

Rin made a face like she was considering it. "I don't know."

"Oh, right, I forgot," Yumi groaned playfully. "Rin _hates_ fun."

Rin sat up sharply, alarmed, and shot a glance at Yumi, who was grinning but looking somewhere else. "I don't hate fun…"

Kichiro released Yumi's arm and wandered forward a little bit, shrugging with both hands. "No pressure or anything. We were planning to go just the two of us anyway."

Yumi stuck out her tongue at him as he approached the door again, then followed him, standing over Rin with her hands on her hips. "Aw, c'mon, Rin! We're roommates; we're supposed to bond, and… like, do roommate stuff."

She kept her vibrant eyes wide, her gaze piercing Rin's own.

"Okay, then," mumbled Rin. Kichiro watched her uncertainly as she did.

"Yeah?" Yumi took her hands off her hips. "Alright, cool."

"I just want to change my clothes."

"Okay. Come on, then." Thrusting a finger in the air, Yumi turned to her boyfriend as Rin shimmied to her feet and stalked into the dorm room. "Okay, you're banished. No boys allowed."

"Alright. I'll just be out here pretending I don't exist, then."

Yumi let out a girly-sounding giggle and shut the door.

She laughed differently around Kichiro. She was always kind of nasally about it, but with him around, it was kind of squeaky, too. Like someone poked her lung with a needle every time she took a breath. Rin stood in place as she considered it, right up until Yumi slapped her hands down forcefully on Rin's shoulders.

"Okay, what are you thinking then?"

"I got paint on these." Rin looked down at herself. A very light streak of blue streaked down her clothes, trailing down the side of her shirt and staining the top of her pant leg. It was clear from the pattern that the stain had followed the edge of her apron, which was too small for her. But there was something she liked about the paint stains- maybe just that it was incidental, that there was no planning behind it.

Cupping the stained part of Rin's shirt in her hand, Yumi clenched her teeth and looked Rin in the eye again. "Yikes… may come out in the washer, right? Do you just want me to toss these in your hamper?"

"Okay."

The two exchanged a glance, and Rin dipped forward, wordlessly initiating their usual routine. Yumi grabbed her sleeves and pulled up on them, peeling Rin's shirt straight off of her and balling it up in both hands. Rin stayed seated on the bed as Yumi carried the paint-spattered shirt to the hamper.

Lips curved into a contemplative frown, she cocked her neck and looked down at her bra. For a moment, she wondered if they made lopsided bras with two different cup sizes. Yumi probably wouldn't fit into one very well, but there was something to that idea, Rin thought.

Yumi returned to her and fidgeted with the button on Rin's pants, awkwardly trying to undress her from her kneeling position below the bed.

"Okay, so, Rin. Serious question." Yumi pursed her lips a little bit as she struggled to phrase her question. "Was this… um… overstepping? Kichiro and I were just hanging out in here, and we just… I really wasn't expecting to end up monopolizing the room like we did. I feel like that was inconsiderate. I really don't want to be hard to live with…"

Rin flailed her legs like she was pedaling a bicycle, struggling to help Yumi remove her pants. "No. It's okay. I don't mind waiting."

Yumi paced across the room again and tossed the balled-up pants into the hamper. "That feels like something that you'd just say to make me feel better, even though you secretly resent me for it."

"It's not. I don't want to make you feel better."

"Oh, gee, _thanks_."

"Wait. I do want you to feel better." She planted her bare feet on the floor and stood up sharply, suddenly alarmed. "Wait, I'm not- I don't know. Sorry. I don't want to fight with you."

"Huh? Fight?" Yumi pouted as she stopped to look Rin in the eye, the two of them now standing face-to-face. "You worry too much. We don't have to fight about anything. I'm just trying not to be a nuisance." Visibly amused, to Rin's dismay, Yumi took a step backwards and turned away from her. "I don't know if I ever mentioned this, but I shared a bedroom with both of my sisters growing up. I just know how irritated I would be if one of them locked me out of my room without any warning." As she spoke, Yumi made her way to Rin's clothes drawer and began digging through it with both hands. "You don't have any siblings, do you?"

Little strands of hair trailed down in front of her eyes again, and Rin shook them out of her face as she slumped quietly back down onto the mattress behind her. "No, I don't."

She looked at the wall above her bed frame, at her untitled painting that Nomiya had told her to keep. It was so dark; it felt like she'd gone through more black than any other color while working on that exhibition. She remembered falling asleep on the dusty floor of the atelier, how strange it felt to be uncomfortable lying on the floor. It was something she had always been so comfortable with before then…

"Hey! This is cute! I don't think I've ever seen you in this before." Boldly interrupting Rin's train of thought, Yumi flipped around, holding a polo shirt in front of her chest and looking down at herself. "You should wear short sleeves more often."

Rin gave half a shrug. "I think people don't like to look at my arms."

"Yeah? Well, so what? How is that anyone else's business?"

They exchanged a glance, and Rin yielded, raising the bare stumps of her arms at her sides. Yumi stuffed her into a short-sleeved shirt with a little collar. The ends of her stumps poked out of the sleeves.

"See?" Yumi smiled at the sight of her, like it made her proud. "You look sophisticated."

"Okay." Rin didn't know what she meant by that but nodded anyway.

Yumi took the following silence as an opportunity to fish out a pair of pants from the drawer. Her chest pressed against Rin's back as Rin shimmied into them, and her hair hung over Rin's face in bunches. But there was nothing Rin could do about it, so she just kept her eyes shut instead. Yumi buttoned up the trousers with one hand like an expert, then returned to the door to let her boyfriend back inside.

The collar of Rin's shirt gnawed at her neck- she'd never worn it before, and it had never been washed. Quiet and weary, she shuffled around in it for a few moments before lying back against the bed to stare at the ceiling again.

Yumi's squeaky laughing shook the table as Rin tried to eat, her heel digging uneasily into the wood grain. Frowning, she twiddled a red-handled fork around between her toes, not wanting to say anything. The others had paid already and were working on cleaning their plates, so everyone would have to wait on her. Rin was in no particular hurry.

The little scrap of food Rin had managed to skewer on the fork slid off and landed uselessly on her plate. She stared at it in silence.

Kichiro tapped his fingers on the table, taking long pauses in-between his sentences. "Does Tsuchiya even do watercolors?" He shot a look at Yumi in the seat next to him, head tilting down to look the shorter girl in the eye.

Yumi rolled her eyes at him. "He mostly does oil paintings. But I didn't ask him to look at them because he's an expert; I asked him because I wanted an honest opinion."

"What about Tsuchiya screams 'honest opinion' to you? He's a dick."

"Exactly! He doesn't try to protect my feelings. Unlike a certain someone."

Unable to hide his smile, Kichiro looked away a little bit and snickered at her. "Yeah, that's called masochism."

"You can't improve without honest criticism." She leaned over the table with both arms. "Some of us are hoping to make a career out of this someday, y'know."

She talked with her hands, so that every time she laughed or said something loud she flicked a little bit of food from the ends of her chopsticks.

"Yeah, yeah. Let me worry about passing my classes before I get that far." Kichiro shoveled food into his mouth and looked up from his plate, eyebrow raised. "So? What did he tell you?"

"…He said, as an Impressionist, he didn't really 'feel' my style," Yumi replied after a moment, smacking her lips.

He interrupted her with a laugh, unapologetic. "Seriously? That's what he said?"

"Yeah."

"Impressionist? Those are the words he used?"

"That's right. So what?"

" _So_ , he's not an Impressionist. Impressionism is, like, a historical movement. Making blurry-looking paintings doesn't make you an Impressionist."

"Well, that's the kind of thing he paints. So it's what he calls himself."

"I'm just saying, unless he is a two-hundred-year-old Frenchman, he's not an _Impressionist_. He just calls himself that because he thinks it will make people take him more seriously."

Rin looked up a little bit more from her dish, intrigued by the thought, but Kichiro didn't seem to notice.

Yumi crossed her arms. "Okay, then, big shot. Did _you_ like my watercolors?"

"Sure," said Kichiro noncommittally. "They looked great to me."

"Okay, but how about when you aren't just trying to kiss my ass?"

"Oh, for the love of-" Giving an exaggerated sigh, Kichiro set down his utensils on the table and turned to face his girlfriend, shrugging with both hands. "I'm not kissing your ass! They're good! But, look, if _you_ like them, I don't know why you even give a damn what anyone else thinks. Least of all Tsuchiya. All I'm saying."

"I'm just trying to make sure I actually get criticism on my work outside of class. You know?"

"Yumi, I spend most of my time trying to minimize the amount of criticism I get _in_ class."

"Well, you don't give yourself enough credit." She pursed her lips at him. "If you asked, people would tell you that you have more talent than you think you do."

Kichiro was quiet for a little while, and glanced over at the table at Rin just in time to catch her watching the two of them. As though remembering for the first time that she was sitting there, he jabbed a finger in her direction, enthusiastic. "Hey, Rin. You were working really hard on that landscape painting of the beach. How did that go over in class?"

Rin froze for a moment with surprise, but nevertheless found herself speaking before she even really had time to think about her answer. "It went okay. Chishiki said he liked it."

"Sure _sounds_ okay. I wish he'd say that about something _I_ painted."

"He says that a lot."

"Pft, are we talking about the same guy?"

Kichiro looked right into her eyes, and she diverted her gaze. The exchange didn't make much sense to her, but she tried not to draw attention to it.

"I'm talking about Chishiki." Rin spoke quietly, pursing her lips.

"Yeah, I know that. I was, uh, kidding."

"Oh."

Rin drooped her head, and he watched her with an awkward frown. Yumi cut the silence by patting her hand down on the table, and Rin jumped slightly, startled.

"Did you ever come up with a title for that beach painting, Rin?" Yumi asked loudly, turning her head in Rin's direction.

Fork hovering somewhere in front of her mouth, Rin lowered it back onto her plate, closing her eyes tiredly. "No, I didn't."

"Aw. And I gave you such good suggestions."

"I couldn't pick one."

"How hard can it be?" Kichiro gave a blank expression as he glanced between the two of them. "If it was me, I would have just called it 'The Beach' or something."

"Yeah, well, if it was _you_ , you would have just sketched and painted the entire thing in a weekend. You're not a good role model," Yumi scolded, shooting a cheeky smile in Rin's direction.

Rin swirled her food around with her fork, off-put.

"I'll put effort into a school assignment when they give me one worth my effort, and not a minute sooner," Kichiro replied matter-of-factly.

"You're lazy."

"No, I'm efficient. Putting in a ton of effort on little assignments like that is a waste of time. Who's ever going to look at a painting you did for 'show-and-tell'? Far as I'm concerned, half-assing it is an act of integrity."

"And how do you figure that?"

He paused and nodded once, like he had to take a moment to agree with his own argument before explaining it. "Well… you put a title on something, and you're saying, 'This is what this is'. You're saying it's a finished product- like, it's a work of art. If you don't dignify it that way, you don't have to own it. Lets you save your creative juices for the stuff you actually care about." He jabbed a chopstick in Yumi's direction pointedly. "I never sign them, either. School assignments. It's the same thing."

"You…" hummed Yumi with a smirk, "…are very good at rationalizing."

He shrugged halfheartedly. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm brilliant."

"Maybe both."

Kichiro turned to look at her, only to find that Yumi had closed the distance between her chair and his own, putting them face to face. She leaned forward to kiss him, resting a hand on his leg. As she did, he cupped one hand over her ribs and ran his hand down them, fingers rapping gently along her side like he was banging on tiny drums. She didn't seem to notice, though.

Stoic, Rin remained seated in her chair, dropping her fork on her plate and sliding her leg off the edge of the table. As she watched them, Yumi's pants vibrated from the back pocket, and she stared out of curiosity for a few moments before loudly interrupting them.

"Your pants are buzzing," Rin observed flatly.

Without a second thought, Yumi reached into her back pocket to tap a button on her phone, looking over her shoulder and smirking. "Yeah. Thanks, Rin."

"You're welcome."

Yumi slumped back into her own chair, and Kichiro took a second glance at Rin before turning his head to his girlfriend again. "What are you doing on Saturday?"

She brushed a little bit of hair behind her ear with one hand and looked at the table. "Not much besides class. I thought I might get some schoolwork out of the way in the afternoon."

"I can probably get rid of my roommate."

"'Kay."

"Should I?"

"Sure."

"I don't want to spend too much time hogging your room; we already shut Rin out today."

"Yeah. I'm with you."

"Who called you?"

"Doesn't matter. I'll call them back. I don't want to hold you guys up."

"What if it's your mom?"

"She can wait."

"You're going to feel bad if you don't call her back until we get back to your dorm."

"It's not my mom."

"What if it is?"

With narrowed eyes, she shot him a look, then reached into her pocket again and pulled out her cell phone, opening it and reading for a moment.

Getting no response from her, Kichiro widened his eyes. "It was your mom, wasn't it?"

Yumi paused before responding, closing the phone again. "…Can you guys wait up for a few minutes?"

"Yeah, no problem." Smiling to himself, he stood from his chair, gesturing towards the door at the lobby of the restaurant. "I'm gonna go have a smoke."

Yumi scrunched her face, making a motherly, disapproving sort of expression. "Gross."

Rin craned her neck up to keep her eyes fixed on him as he stood. The opportunity struck her suddenly, and she looked at him pleadingly.

For a few moments, her mouth stopped speaking for her. "I'm finished eating. Can I have one?"

"What? Rin, you don't smoke!" Yumi narrowed her eyes as she said that, shooting a glance in Rin's direction. "…I mean… do you?"

Rin lowered her head. "Sometimes I do."

Yumi scratched her chin a little bit as she thought about that.

"It's cool, Rin. C'mon." Kichiro waved Rin forward as he stepped away from the table, and Yumi rolled her eyes at him.

Moving slowly, Rin followed him. Behind them, Yumi started speaking loudly from her seat at the table.

Kichiro flung open the doors at the entrance to the restaurant and held one of them open so that Rin could step through alongside him. Foot traffic bustled on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant's front patio, and cars on the road in front of that. The streets didn't quiet down much in the city, a fact which Rin still hadn't decided whether she liked or not.

Kichiro leaned his back heavily against the wall as he fumbled with a cigarette, glancing over at Rin as she shimmied toward him along the wall.

"Pft, alright. Here," he said quietly, amused by her hopeful expression.

With two fingers, he held a fresh one to Rin's face, and she scooped it awkwardly out of his hand with her mouth. Trying not to drop it, she pushed it forward with her tongue and lolled her head back, allowing Kichiro to light it.

Tucking the lighter into his back pocket, Kichiro took a drag on his cigarette and shot a glance at Rin, snickering at the sight of her.

"You can do it without hands." He released his cigarette with one hand to demonstrate, flicking it in his mouth and puffing smoke into the air in front of him. "It kind of takes some practice, though."

Rin flicked her own cigarette a little bit with her tongue, and the smoke trailed straight into her face, burning her nostrils. She winced a little bit, but she didn't want to say anything, so she simply closed her eyes instead.

Kichiro groaned at that. Reaching over again, he grabbed it out of her mouth, and she exhaled loudly, breathing smoke straight onto his hand. Kichiro chuckled at her as he placed the cigarette back into her mouth.

"Does helping you do this make me a bad friend?" he asked with a snicker.

Rin opened her mouth just a little, trying to speak without dropping the cigarette out of her mouth. "No, it doesn't."

Though the word 'friend' didn't sit right with her in the first place.

Kichiro sized her up with a glance. "Tsch."

He held his own cigarette with two fingers again, posed coolly against the wall. The two of them stood in silence for a couple of minutes.

After a stretch of silence, one which felt to Rin like a very long time, Kichiro reached over to take Rin's cigarette again so she could exhale. "So… how are you doing, Rin? I'm definitely not supposed to bring this up, but Yumi said she was worried about you."

Rin narrowed her eyes. He placed the cigarette in her mouth again, and she tried to smoke on her own. "I'm okay."

"Alright. I know it's none of my business; it's just that I hate to see Yumi worry like that. She gets really caught up in other peoples' business sometimes, but it comes from a good place. Remember that, if she happens to bother you about it."

"Okay."

He rapped two fingers of his free hand on his opposite wrist, lips pursed. "…You're not from the city, right? Are you settling in? How do you like it here?"

Shuffling a little, Rin turned toward him so that her stump pressed into the wall through the end of her sleeve. "It's okay. It… smells like smoke."

"No kidding." He shrugged half-heartedly. "I've never liked the city, to be completely honest. I have family in Osaka, so I'd had my fill long before coming to live in Tokyo. So many people, and so much noise, and everything. I just think it gets hard to think sometimes."

"Then why did you come here?"

He smirked at that. "Because I got into the school. Talent or dumb luck, or something; knowing me, probably the second one. My dad is a neurosurgeon, which is the reason I can afford to go here in the first place. He wanted me to do the same thing as him, but since that wasn't going to happen, he at least wanted me to go somewhere he could brag about at parties." He chuckled and leaned his head back against the wall. "But the reason I go to art school in general? Fewer tests."

She studied him as he smirked to himself. He was so self-assured, and Rin found it fascinating.

After a moment, he turned his head to the side and made sudden eye contact with Rin, startling her. "How about you? You following your dream, or what? What are _you_ doing here?"

Her mouth almost spoke for her, but something stopped her. Rin relaxed, just for a moment, and drooped her head down to look at the ground. Her bangs fell over her eyes again. "I just… needed something to be different."

"Yeah." Kichiro pursed his lips and took another drag on his cigarette, contemplative. "I understand how you feel."

Rin froze at the words. Hair dangled in her eyes. For a moment, she forgot about it.

Thinking nothing of the exchange, Kichiro stared off absentmindedly in the distance as he finished his cigarette. But Rin had her eyes fixed on him. They were both very quiet again, but the kind of quiet that made your ears ring, like after a bomb went off.

Yumi appeared in the doorway, and Kichiro's lips twitched into a tiny smile when he spotted her.

"There she is." Kichiro flicked his cigarette to the ground and stamped it out with his foot. "Everything good with your mom?"

"Yeah. Everything's good. She's trying to sort out tuition bills. Needed some stuff from me."

"So it could have waited, then."

"Yeah, probably. But thanks for waiting, anyway."

Pursing his lips, he leaned in toward her with an arm outstretched. "How about a kiss?"

"How about a breath mint? Or a nicotine patch…" Yumi rolled her eyes at him and turned away, arms crossed. "You all good, Rin?"

Rin opened her mouth, and the butt of her cigarette landed on her shoe. Nearly silent, she gave the faintest nod without stepping away from the wall.

"Cool." Yumi pointed her head toward the sidewalk. "Can we get going, then?"

"I'm ready," said Kichiro.

Yumi turned toward Rin, who drooped her head absentmindedly. "Rin? Ready?"

Rin nodded vaguely, and Yumi smiled in turn, taking a step away from the entrance. Kichiro took her hand as they moved onto the sidewalk. Without saying anything else, Rin finally stepped away from the wall, trailing behind the two of them with heavy feet.

She blinked twice and shook her head, her long bangs in her eyes.


	4. Annunciation

**Annunciation**

Little snowflakes, sparse in the gray sky, floated to the ground outside the giant rectangular windows of Chishiki's classroom. Every once in a while, one or two rogue flakes got swept up in a gust of wind, and they swerved to the side, right into the window pane. Rin watched as they touched the glass and melted away into little watery splotches. She thought that was a pity, and then she wondered what would make her think something like that.

Someone passed by Rin's face, drawing her attention suddenly- a boy that she didn't know very well carrying a framed painting in his arms like a baby. Chishiki took it out of his hands and placed it on an easel in the front of the room. Bleary-eyed, Rin shifted in her seat to watch them, fixating on the painting with an intense frown.

It was a picture of Paris at nighttime, full of grey and black but dotted with yellow lights. Looking at it made her a little sad for a reason she couldn't understand, and for a few moments she turned her head back to the window to look at the snow again out of frustration.

"Ueno," said Chishiki enthusiastically, addressing the student that carried the painting up. "Care to tell us what you've got for us today?"

Ueno paused for a moment before responding, drawing Rin's attention again. "I call it _Still Evening_."

"Excellent. Care to explain?"

"I think the thing I focused on the most while I was working on this was to capture some kind of… sense of tranquility, in the middle of what I would envision as a busy night life."

"As you would, in a stereotypical downtown setting like this."

"Yeah." Ueno scratched behind his head with an awkward little smile, staring at his own painting for a little while longer. "It- I think the main idea is that it's strictly observational. I was careful to frame it so that it wasn't directly engaged with the environment. That's why the point of view is of someone standing on a balcony above the city streets."

Chishiki paused before speaking, too, crossing his arms firmly in front of his chest. "Have you ever actually been to Paris?"

"No. But I've always wanted to go."

"So what did you use as your model for the features of this painting?"

"Um, mostly photographs. I centered it around the Eiffel Tower, which is emphasized in a lot of pictures of the city since it's so easy to identify."

"Mhm. And so, what is it that inspired you to paint Paris specifically? Because to my eye, it looks like you could simply recolor the Eiffel Tower to be red and white, and all of a sudden, the locale would seem considerably less exotic."

A few people around Rin- to her typical confusion- laughed at the remark. Ueno did not, instead just smiling uncomfortably at it and scratching the back of his head again. She watched him thoughtfully, intrigued by his reaction.

"I guess it's just picturesque," he explained eventually, though he seemed like he didn't want to say that. "I've got an image of it in my head, and since I was aiming to emphasize the quiet in a lively sort of environment, it seemed like it fit."

"Right. An environment which is foreign to us can be more completely romanticized. Someone who is not a native of Paris can, I'm sure, much more easily identify the themes of such an image without also bringing in their personal experience of traffic, light pollution, and the smell of smoke." Chishiki smiled softly, rapping his fingers along his arm. "I don't know how many of you are actually _from_ the city, but as someone who grew up in Kita, I can tell you that it is easy to tell the residents from the tourists. There is a different mindset for someone who simply wishes to expose themselves to an environment as in a snapshot, rather than live in it." Chishiki turned to Ueno suddenly, gesturing to him with his hands. "That's why I'm so interested by your decision to emphasize stillness as an- as _the_ \- essential element of the painting. I find it fascinating how we are so interested, collectively, in cityscapes and skylines as a form of _still_ imagery. There is something so… alluring… about this snapshot of an environment that we associate with so much life and activity. It gives a great deal of power to art as a medium that communicates and reflects reality."

Rin looked away from Chishiki, back to the painting of Paris. Why, she wondered, would someone paint a city that they had never even been to? She would never have thought to do such a thing. So many ideas seemed so completely out of her grasp. Or _would_ seem out of her grasp, had she a grasp.

Chishiki pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek before speaking again. "I keep using that word, 'snapshot'. Okay, this isn't a class on photography, so I don't want to diverge too much, but I will say that I think this theme is a big part of photography as an art form in general. _Especially_ landscape or nature photography. Imagine a snapshot of a hummingbird in mid-flight. There's so much power in having that single moment captured where it would have otherwise escaped us entirely. I think that's an important takeaway. Subject is an important part of how art conveys meaning, which it can be easy to overlook when you so greatly emphasize general aesthetic and technique." Chishiki jabbed a finger at the Eiffel Tower in the background of Ueno's painting as he said that. "Take, for example, something- say, something as famous as the _Mona Lisa_. A layman might describe it as a very _realistic_ painting. It would be tempting to describe it that way: a beautiful, highly-detailed Renaissance oil portrait. But consider our subject, and how she is framed. A woman who, 16th century Italian standards of beauty aside, is presented in a way that is very flattering, without blemish, in a fantastical environment. In many ways, the presentation of _Mona Lisa_ can be seen as representing a certain _ideal_ \- that of womanhood- especially when you take it in the context of its contemporary Renaissance works. The power of an artist to convey through their choice of subject and presentation."

He paused again, looking over the class to allow time to think on his words. And Rin thought very hard, picturing the _Mona Lisa_ in her head. She had never painted anything like that- she didn't draw portraits very often in general. When she did, they weren't smiling.

Ueno put his hands together when Chishiki stopped speaking, shuffling around in place a little. "So you're comparing my painting to the _Mona Lisa_?"

"Pft. Yes, in a sense, I suppose I am. But don't forget, even the most well-established works of art are open to critical interpretation… so don't expect your grade to reflect the comparison." Chishiki chuckled loudly, along with several students. "You can take your seat. Thank you very much for sharing your work with us."

Ueno returned to his desk, taking _Still Evening_ from the easel as he stalked away from the front of the room. Most of the students clapped. Rin did not.

"You know why I like this assignment so much?" asked Chishiki, loudly and without any expectation of a response. "Because there's so much variety in an environment. It tells you a lot about an artist, just from how they choose to interpret it. You guys have come up with some surprising and nuanced stuff so far, and I really appreciate everyone's unique insights."

Rin looked at Ueno, who yawned. He seemed to have known exactly what to say about his painting of Paris, and he had never even been there…

With his arms crossed, Chishiki shot his eyes up to the far wall behind the students in the back, glancing at the clock. "Alright, I'm pushing it on time a little, so I'll be brief. But before I let you all go, I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about something extracurricular. I'm sure many of you don't need to be told, but now is usually the time I advise students to start thinking about the students' open museum exhibition in the spring. There are a lot of opportunities for you to get your work out there while you're a student, but if you want to get exposure with professionals- or media attention- this is far and away your best shot. I don't want to sound too cynical or dispassionate, especially since this class is all about art as a form of self-expression. But if I can be perfectly frank, you don't need to sit at a desk and listen to old men lecture at you in order to learn how to _express_ yourselves. You can improve your abilities as an artist at school, certainly, but the mere fact that you all got _in_ proves that you have talent as artists." He sighed quietly before continuing. "No, the most important thing you can do at this school to find success as an artist is to make connections. Network with people. Being an artist requires your passion and your heart, but making that a sustainable choice- that requires a little bit more. And I know that we all have a very romantic notion of being a starving artist, but you can take it from me- speaking from very personal experience here- it is a lot less enjoyable than it sounds. And a lot less appealing to women than you might imagine, too."

Several people laughed, including Ueno, who kept smiling as he scrawled in his notebook. Rin leaned over in her seat, but she couldn't make out what he was writing. Was it important…?

"I'm really out of time, and I don't want to keep you late. There are a few of you that I've already spoken to about this a bit that I'd like to stick around. So… if I call your name, stay behind. Otherwise, you're dismissed." Chishiki glanced down at a sheet of paper for a moment and cleared his throat. "Takeuchi, Hayashi… er, Hung, Tezuka, and Ueno. And anyone else who'd like to talk about the spring student exhibition, of course."

All the students that Chishiki called moved against the crowd to circle around Rin's seat in the front row. Not a single other person stayed. Even those that were called didn't seem like they wanted to be there. Rin studied Ueno's expression as he settled into the chair next to hers- but try as she might, she couldn't figure out what was going on in his head.

She narrowed her eyes. She certainly would have stayed, even if she hadn't been called on.

Chishiki approached the small cluster of students in the front of the room, coming nearly close enough to touch Rin's desk. She looked up at him from her seat, and he flashed her a little smile before looking away to address all of the students.

"So I am going to extra lengths to promote the spring exhibition this year," he declared, "because I'm one of the organizers on behalf of the school. The events coordinator of the museum specially reached out to me to ask about students that might be participating. Last year we had forty students host exhibitions. This year they're cutting it in half. And while that does mean it'll be a lot harder to get a slot, it also means you will be able to show off a lot more of your art if you're selected for the exhibition." Chishiki scanned the students sitting in front of him with a contemplative frown. "As a faculty organizer, it's my job to approve and reserve five of the twenty slots. So I'm trying to speak to the interested students ahead of time and gauge interest… as well as plug the exhibition. I really do think this is the single best opportunity you guys have to branch out to the larger art community in the city. It's certainly not common, but in the past I've actually seen students that get noticed at this exhibition end up getting funneled straight into the museum doing commissioned work after graduation."

Hayashi raised her hand to Rin's right, but Chishiki didn't immediately look at her. Instead he met Rin's uncomfortable gaze, and she slumped her shoulders in response.

"I'm sorry; is something wrong, Tezuka?"

Rin froze for a moment before replying. "You never talked to me about this before."

"No, I didn't. I'm sorry to have you stay; I just-" Chishiki finally looked over to Hayashi, gesturing to her to wait a moment. "Since we did speak before about how you've actually done a private exhibition of your work elsewhere, I thought the spring exhibition would be a really good opportunity for you. I really hope you'll consider it… I was actually hoping you could share what that experience was like, for the benefit of the others…"

Everyone was looking at Rin now, surrounding her on all sides. She widened her eyes, worrying that she might simply lose the ability to speak altogether.

"I-" -Rin took a deep breath- "S- sorry, what?"

Chishiki scratched his chin. "Er, I'm sorry. The exhibition you did at your old high school? Could you tell us a little bit about it?"

"I… I don't know…"

"Just the process. What did you do? What did you get out of it?"

Rin listened to her own breath, which was frustratingly loud. The exhibition at Yamaku was the very last thing in the world that she wanted to think about, but knew she had to answer, and not just for Chishiki's sake.

She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to think a little less. "I had to make a whole set of paintings. I couldn't think of how to name them, so I didn't. I used a lot of paint, and the colors got mixed up, more mixed up than they usually do. Or usually did. Back then. I mean- I- I spent a long time- I didn't eat or sleep much. I was-"

-Rin opened her eyes. Chishiki frowned uncomfortably at her. Looking over her shoulder, she received a strange glance from the other students surrounding her as well.

Rin took another breath."…I worked really hard on it. People asked me a lot of questions about my art. And I sold a painting. And someone from this school was there. And they told Nomiya that I should come here. They gave me a scholarship." She exhaled through her nostrils, throat dry. "Someone wrote about me in a local magazine."

Nobody spoke for a few seconds, and Chishiki scratched his chin again.

Then he smiled at her. "…Well, that's something! I- er, I _was_ trying to illustrate the value of this sort of thing, after all. The exhibition in the spring generally gets quite a bit of attention from journalists." He scratched his nose. "Thank you very much, Tezuka."

"You're welcome," Rin said quietly.

"Um." Chishiki looked away from her, taking one step back from her desk. "And yes, it's going to mean a lot of hard work. If you choose to participate. The curators that set the whole thing up at the museum ask that every student prepare an original collection of their work for display. So that means you'll have to set aside the time to produce a unique set of paintings. –Did you have a question, Hayashi?"

The black haired girl twirled the end of her hair in her finger, shooting Rin a glance before responding. "No, sir- well, um, it's been answered."

"Right. Then… does anyone else have any questions?" Nobody spoke up, and Chishiki did not wait long to continue. "In that case, I'd like to take down names if you guys want to participate. Can you raise your hand if you are interested in a slot?"

Everyone except for Hayashi raised their hands. Rin looked around at them frantically, knotted sleeves hanging uselessly at her sides. She clenched her teeth.

After a moment, Chishiki uncertainly met Rin's gaze again, and she stared at him pleadingly.

He tilted his head a little. "Er, Tezuka…?"

Rin straightened out immediately. "I want a slot." She spoke firmly, louder than before. Almost fiercely.

"Right." Chishiki took names on a scrap of paper, nodding to the group. "Thanks for your interest, guys. I am really looking forward to the exhibition this year. I will try my damnedest to get you all in the exhibition. But either way, you can expect to hear from me about it in the next week or so. Okay?"

The people around Rin murmured in affirmation, while she remained silent.

"Okay, then you're all dismissed. Have a nice afternoon, everyone." Chishiki waved his hand as he returned to his desk, shuffling the paper he'd written names on into a stack of others.

Most of the other students simply left right away, but Ueno made his way back to his own seat first, retrieving his painting from its position leaning against his desk.

 _Still Evening_. Rin stared at the painting as Ueno got his things. Noticing her watching him as he stepped out of the room, Ueno's eyes lingered on her for a few seconds before he made his exit.

Rin looked at Chishiki again, who seemed ignorant to the fact that she was the only one left in the room. Seeing no reason to stay longer than she needed to, she hurried out of the classroom, forcing the door handle down with her knee.

Rin stumbled out into the hallway as the door swung open against her body weight. Ueno was already most of the way down the hallway. On impulse, she scurried after him.

"Ueno," Rin said, being firm again.

He looked over his shoulder with surprise, raising an eyebrow at the sight of her. "Oh. Uh, hey. You can call me Eiji if you want."

"What do you think I should call you?"

He paused before answering, frowning suddenly. "Um, we can go by first names. But you'll have to give me yours… I'm not that great with names, sorry."

"Rin."

"Okay."

Rin stalked a little bit behind Eiji, mimicking his footsteps without ever actually catching up to him to walk side-by-side. He only looked back at her to make an odd face.

"You asked Chishiki to give you a slot for the exhibition," said Rin.

He blinked. "Uh. Yeah. I did. So did you."

"Do you think it is going to make you a better artist?" Rin heard her voice crack a little as she asked that.

"I- what? Yeah, I guess."

Eiji slowed down a little as the two of them approached a staircase, and Rin stopped altogether, staring at the painting in his arms.

Noticing her lack of footsteps, he stopped at the door and turned around, one eyebrow raised. "Uh…?"

"That painting." Rin craned her neck to gesture to _Still Evening_. "Why did you paint that…?"

"Uh." Eiji took it out from under his arm to look at it. "…I don't know. That was the assignment."

"No. The assignment was an environment."

"This _is_ an environment."

"But why did you paint it?"

"I don't know. I like Paris. I don't really know how to answer that." He made a face at her and tucked his painting under his arm again. "Uh, look, I've got to get going. I'll… see you around, Rin."

He waved with one hand and turned away from her, stepping through the door. Rin's shoulders slumped, and she turned around, back leaned against the wall next to the stairwell door. Not feeling like standing, she slid down to the floor, legs outstretched directly in front of her.

She didn't want to do the exhibition in the spring. Certainly not. And there were not many things she was certain of, particularly lately.

And yet she wanted to do it more than anything in the world.

Rin's brain felt like lead.

Exhausted, she cried, just quietly enough to make sure nobody heard.


	5. Dance at le Moulin de la Galette

**Dance at le Moulin de la Galette**

Rin's eyes traced over the veiny lines in her ceiling from wall to wall. There wasn't any real beginning or end to them, and they snaked around and intersected too much in the center to tell each individual one apart. Like tiny threads on a giant plaster spider web. It seemed like they could hold up the whole ceiling weaved together like that, but Rin knew that was the wrong thing to think. They weren't put there for any reason; or if they were, it wasn't a reason Rin had thought of yet. It was pointless to think about.

Little fingers clacked on a keyboard on the other side of the room, almost rhythmically, and for a few moments Rin turned her head to watch. Yumi lay on her belly at the foot of her own bed, doing something mysterious on her laptop. She kicked her feet up behind her, crossing one foot over the other and then crossing her toes a moment later.

She held a paintbrush in her free hand. At the foot of the bed was a small painting on an easel. Something red like fire. Rin watched closely.

"Rin? Everything okay?" Yumi glanced over her shoulder at her roommate with a frown.

Rin laid back and looked at the ceiling again. "Yes." Her head sunk into her pillow, scraggly hair dangling in her eyes.

"What'cha doin'?" asked Yumi.

Rin traced the veins on the ceiling again. "Thinking."

"What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing," Rin lied.

"Hrm."

More clacking on the keyboard.

"What are you doing?" asked Rin, head slumping to the side. She knew it was a stupid question but felt compelled to ask it anyway, a fact that she resented.

"I… am trying to figure out how to go about painting this," said Yumi. "Practicing my watercolors still."

"Can I see?"

"Hm?" Yumi propped herself up on her elbows to allow herself to look at Rin better. "Yeah! Of course you can. Here, come take a look; tell me what you think."

Rin sat up straight and swung her legs over the side of her bed, letting out a soft breath as the soles of her feet pressed against the cold tile floor.

"What are you painting?" Rin stood and walked over to Yumi's bed, slumping down next to her just close enough for them to touch.

Yumi's computer was full of red flowers. Her canvas had just one- but a prettier one than any of the photographs on the screen. The brushstrokes were runny, like water on a piece of red glass. Or a flower petal, come to think of it.

"It's, uh." Yumi leaned in close to read something on her computer screen, cheeks puffed out. "Amaryllis."

"Oh," said Rin.

She leaned forward, craning her neck over the foot of the bed. Yumi reached past her with her brush, tracing the edge of one of the petals on the bottom with vermillion.

"It's colorful," said Rin.

"Well, _amaryllis_ is colorful."

Rin pursed her lips, taken off guard by the remark. "So does that mean you aren't trying to make your painting colorful on purpose?"

"Hm. No, I am. I guess that's what I'm trying to emphasize." Yumi stared at her own painting, brushing a strand of hair out of her face absentmindedly. "You ask good questions, Rin. Tsuchiya told me my painting isn't focused enough. Maybe he has a point. I ought to have a better idea of what I'm trying to do before I start…" She drummed her fingers along her paintbrush as she spoke.

Rin looked back and forth between Yumi's face and the amaryllis, suddenly put-off. "I didn't mean to make you change it."

"No, no. It was a good point. I need to keep in mind the elements that draw in people's attention the most."

"…Okay."

Yumi looked at the photos of flowers on her computer screen again.

Rin looked at the painting. It was definitely the color that drew _her_ attention the most. The gushing reds looked like a wound- a bad one, the kind you'd get from a crocodile or a man in armor on the back of a horse. Yumi wanted to emphasize that, those reds, even more, after what Rin said to her. But was that right? Would it still be Yumi's painting if she changed it because of what Rin said?

Rin didn't want to be someone that asked good questions. She wanted to be someone that gave good answers. Maybe it was all the same? But that couldn't be true, when asking questions was so easy and yet understanding them was so difficult.

She wondered if Yumi saw the amaryllis the same way she did. It seemed like she wanted to. Maybe her perspective was just more flexible than Rin's was?

"Hey, by the way, I talked to Chishiki about that big student exhibition in March. Someone changed their mind and backed out at the last second, so I got their slot." Yumi clicked her tongue, grinning with red cheeks. "How about you? You heard back from him?"

They made brief eye contact, which Rin promptly broke. "I heard back from him. I got one of the slots."

"You did? Really? Rin, that's awesome!"

Rin hesitated to respond. "Mm, maybe it is."

"It _is_! It is a big deal! You can never just let me celebrate something, can you?" Yumi stuck her tongue out and turned back to her laptop. "People have been tripping over each other trying to get in! Honestly! I'm really glad you told me to talk to Chishiki about it, because I seriously don't think any of the professors I have classes with would have been able to help me out." Yumi looked over her shoulder at Rin again, apparently dissatisfied with her roommate's understated frown. "I was thinking I might take the opportunity to show off some new watercolors, since I've been practicing those so much. Do you know what you're going to paint for _your_ exhibition?"

"I don't know."

In truth, Rin didn't even know how she was going to start. She didn't have anything in her brain to paint yet, and she didn't know how she was going to come up with anything. It was supposed to come naturally- in fact, it was supposed to already _be_ there; that was the whole point. But then, Rin knew she didn't know _what_ the point was, which was the whole reason she had to do the exhibition.

Thinking about it made her feel sick. She wanted a cigarette.

"It's so cool that we'll both get sections there," Yumi said after a while. "We should pick out a spot in the museum and do the exhibition next to each other. We can make a little competition out of it."

"…Competition?" Rin did not like the sound of that.

"Yeah, see whose art gets more attention. See who sells more. I dunno."

"I don't know, either."

"Eh. Doesn't matter anyway; I'd lose." Yumi let out a nasally giggle.

Without dwelling on the point, Yumi glanced back once more at Rin and then returned to tracing the amaryllis petal with her brush. Rin thought for a long time before saying anything.

"Why would you lose?" she asked flatly.

"Ah." Yumi shrugged. "You paint with your feet. That automatically makes you a zillion times more interesting." After a second, Yumi clenched her teeth, though she still didn't turn around. "Uh, sorry, I mean- I didn't mean any offense, or anything. Your painting is better than mine either way. I just mean that people will probably be more intrigued at first glance by the fact that…" Yumi trailed off and shook her head, face much redder than before. "Never mind. I'm just being an idiot. Sorry."

"I don't think you're being an idiot."

Rin studied the back of Yumi's head. People often got embarrassed when they talked about Rin's lack of arms, which she had come to expect, even if she never really understood why. Lately, though, it seemed out of place, probably because people hadn't acted that way much at Yamaku. Rin wondered if Emi had gotten used to that, too.

But that was definitely the wrong thing to think about, so she closed her eyes and tried not to let it distract her. She thought about the amaryllis instead.

Yumi said she was trying to emphasize its color, at least after Rin mentioned it. But if that was true, why was her amaryllis redder than any of the ones in the photographs? Is that how she saw them? Maybe, if you took out all the sharpness, and the darkness, and the edges on the petals, the redness would be easier to see. That was something a painting could do that a photograph couldn't. Was that the purpose for Yumi's amaryllis? And if it was, why paint an amaryllis at all? Why not something even more colorful than that?

Rin slumped back a little on Yumi's bed, and the two of them pressed close together, so that Yumi's side nestled against Rin's hip. Yumi didn't seem to notice or care much. Rin let it be.

A few minutes passed in near silence, as Rin watched Yumi paint and repaint the same spot until the colors all bled from the edge of the petal into the center.

At the other end of the room, loud knocking on the door interrupted their peace, and getting no response, paused for a few seconds before returning.

Yumi rolled her eyes without looking up. "Door's open!"

The door opened immediately, and Kichiro stepped inside, looking the whole room over before settling on Rin and Yumi.

"Hello, ladies," he said slowly. "Uh. Hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Hello," Rin said quietly, not really looking at him.

Yumi dropped her feet to the bed suddenly and propped herself up on her elbows, looking up at Kichiro with her cheeks puffed out. "I was wondering when you were gonna show up, pal."

He scratched behind his head, clearing the distance between them until he stood perched above the bed just to the side of Yumi's painting. "…What is that supposed to mean?"

"I figured you would have come to see me bright and early today of all days," Yumi replied, jabbing her paintbrush in his direction.

"Today of all- what?" Kichiro narrowed his eyes. "What's today…?"

Yumi sat up on her knees, and Rin shuffled off the bed to accommodate her. "I knew it!" she cried out, placing her hands on her knees. "I knew you would forget!"

Frantic, Kichiro opened and closed his mouth a few times before figuring out what to say. "No. No way. Your birthday is in _March_. I could have _sworn_ you told me your birthday is in March!"

"It's not my birthday, dumbass!" Yumi threw up her hands, paintbrush still balanced uneasily between her fingers on her right hand. "Seriously? It's our six month anniversary! Since we started going out! In June?"

Kichiro thought about that for a long time, slowly crossing his arms and putting two fingers to his chin. "…Huh."

"Yeah." Yumi slapped one hand on her knee. "I _knew_ you would forget!"

He tilted his head to the side, and his frown grew a bit more rigid. "I was supposed to remember six months? What is this, junior high?"

Yumi scoffed. "…What the hell is that supposed to mean?!"

"I mean, why would you celebrate six months? Six months isn't a thing."

"It's half a year!"

"You don't _celebrate_ it. It's not a thing."

"It is _so_ a thing! Are you serious?" Yumi turned to Rin suddenly, who took a step away from the bed with surprise. "Rin, tell him six months is a thing."

Unsure of what to say, Rin stared at Yumi with wide eyes for a few moments before turning to look at Kichiro instead. She ended up not saying anything at all, a resolution she was actually quite satisfied with.

"Oh, forget it," said Yumi. "Six months is definitely a thing, Kichiro."

"But why? Who cares?" Kichiro flailed his arms around in front of him as he spoke. "It's just another arbitrary day on the calendar! I don't know why people have to come up with all these reasons to celebrate, like every day we manage not to break up is some kind of massive accomplishment."

They exchanged a glance, and Yumi leaned forward to set her brush against her easel.

"Oh my God," she groaned. "…You are _so_ not getting laid."

"Yeah, yeah…" He looked away from Yumi, eyes settling somewhere on the floor. "I'm just saying, you don't need to make a bigger deal out of it than it is."

"Fine! Fine! Forget I said anything, then." Yumi lay down on her back, placing both hands under her head. "God forbid I want to do something special with you!"

"Oh, geez. Come on; please don't-"

"-What?"

"Don't…" Kichiro stopped himself and threw up his hands. "Alright, alright. Fine. I'm sorry." He took a step closer to the bed, and Rin had to take a few steps back to make way for him.

Yumi raised one eyebrow at Kichiro, tilting her head up.

He shrugged, looking her in the eye. "…I didn't know it was important to you. If I had, I would have done something."

Yumi didn't say anything, and they looked at each other for another few seconds.

"…I love you?" Kichiro added, waving one hand in front of him.

"Yeah." Yumi smirked. "Alright."

Kichiro sat down next to Yumi's feet, and she stared down her legs at him. Rin slumped onto her own bed in turn.

"Can I do something for you?" Kichiro asked. "Do you want to go out for dinner or something?"

"We can do that. But it's not quite late enough for dinner yet. Still need something else to do before then."

"We could go for a walk or something."

"No way am I going for a walk in this weather."

"Well, gee, Yumi." Kichiro pressed both hands into the bed, looking at the art above the headboard. "You don't want to go for a walk. You don't want to eat. You don't want to have sex. My list of things we can do has pretty much been exhausted."

The two of them laughed, and Kichiro rested his hand on Yumi's shin, drumming his fingers against the side of her leg. Rin rested her feet on the floor.

"What are you painting?" asked Kichiro, leaning over her legs to look at the canvas behind him.

"Amaryllis," said Yumi.

"It's pretty! Very colorful."

"Thanks." Yumi glanced at Rin out of the corner of her eyes, though not long enough to notice Rin gaping at Kichiro.

"Are you going to show this at the spring student exhibition?"

"I might, when it's finished."

"You should."

"Maybe I will."

"I bet people would really like it."

"You don't have to kiss up to me."

Kichiro flashed her a tiny smile with just the corner of his mouth. "You always think I'm kissing up to you when I tell you I like your art, but I never am."

"Maybe you just like my art better than I do," Yumi laughed.

Kichiro shrugged halfheartedly. "Hell, maybe I _do_. You always look for the flaws in your own work, whether they're there or not."

"Well, they're always there."

"It's all a matter of perspective."

"I guess."

Neither of them said anything after that, and Yumi took the break in the conversation to pull her legs away from Kichiro and stand from her spot on the bed. He stood, too, and walked around the easel on the other side to meet her in the center of the room.

"Oh, by the way," said Yumi, "Rin got a slot for that exhibition as well. We're gonna set up our stuff next to each other at the museum. So you can check out her stuff, too."

"Is that so? Cool!" Kichiro turned to look at Rin, waving one hand. "Congrats, Rin."

Rin didn't say anything- but she did return the glance, her eyes slightly narrowed. He pursed his lips.

"What are you thinking?" he asked, turning back to Yumi. "Somewhere kind of fancy?"

Yumi shrugged. "Eh. I don't know about fancy."

"I guess it doesn't matter. It'll probably be pretty crowded wherever we go."

"You're saying we should get going."

"Well, I don't see any reason to stick around."

With a small sigh, Yumi looked back to her bed, appraising it. After a moment of thought, she closed her laptop and carried it over to her desk to charge. Kichiro hung around by the door as he waited.

"For the record," he declared, looking away from her, "if you wanted to hear from me this morning, you could have called me."

Yumi met him at the door, slinging her purse over her shoulder. "To be honest, I mostly just wanted to see if you would remember."

"Wow. My very own girlfriend doesn't even want to take the time to call me." Kichiro threw up his hands dramatically before swinging the door open. "On our _six month anniversary_."

"Don't push it, buddy."

The door slammed shut, and the couple disappeared into the hallways of the girls' dormitory.

Rin sat in silence on the bed for a couple of minutes.

Yumi's painting of the amaryllis was still propped up on the easel at the foot of the bed, the red brushstrokes slowly drying on the edge of the petals. Rin stood from her bed and slumped down on Yumi's instead, to get a better look. She wondered if Yumi would show it to people at the exhibition.

Critics tended to see all the flaws, that being their job and all. Maybe Yumi saw it the same way. That must be for the best, Rin thought.

She still had nothing of her own to paint for the exhibition. Nothing in her brain. Maybe the problem was that she was too focused on her own thoughts. She didn't know how to look at things the right way, anyway.

Rin looked up from the amaryllis painting, to the window. The wind blew snow all over the place in huge gusts.

The snowflakes that touched the window pane melted into watery splotches, which all bled down from the edge into the center.


	6. The Son of Man

**The Son of Man**

Rin followed two girls out of her dormitory, into the freezing cold. They pressed their sides against each other as though they were conjoined twins, probably trying to keep warm. If either of them were a boy, she might have assumed they were in love, but sometimes girls would huddle up together whether they were in love or not.

The girls walked down the sidewalk and out of sight, and Rin stopped focusing on them. Her shoes pressed into the snow, which was packed tight enough to stand on. The wind blew snowflakes down at an angle, so that even people wearing glasses would get snow in their face. It was possibly the cruelest kind of wind, though she knew it wasn't that way on purpose.

Rin shivered and took a deep breath, watching her breath escape from her mouth and float in trails into the air, like smoke from an invisible cigarette. She wasn't wearing a coat, just a dark green sweater with the sleeves knotted off. The winter air slipped through the pores of the sweater and snaked all along her body, giving her goosebumps. Her bus pass, which hung from a lanyard around her neck, blew to the side and grazed her chest.

The bus stop nearest to her building sat on a lonely street corner a block down. Three people were already waiting there when she arrived, but nobody sat on the bench, which was covered in snow. Rin stood next to them and let her head hang down. Her hair was getting quite long, and the falling snow got trapped in it. It made her hair cold and wet, so that she shivered when it touched her face.

Nobody standing at the bus stop knew each other, so nobody said anything to anyone else. So the only noise came from the cars that passed by on the road.

When the bus arrived, everyone formed a line and piled on without a word. Rin followed closely behind.

The bus driver leaned back in his seat and frowned at Rin. They looked each other in the eye for a few moments.

He scratched his chin. "I'm sorry; do you…?"

He trailed off, so Rin took the opportunity to respond. "I can do it," she said quietly, shaking her head.

Leaning to one side, she craned her neck over the machine in the front of the bus, and the card dangling from the lanyard around her neck tapped against the sensor. It took a few tries before the machine accepted the card, but the bus driver didn't seem to want to say anything about it.

Rin walked down the aisle and took a seat in the middle of the bus, next to a man in a green jacket reading a magazine. The little bit of snow that rested on her shoulders melted into her sweater. The man didn't look up at her or say anything.

She rested her head back against the seat.

The bus crunched against snow that was bunched up against the curb as it started to move. The roads were clear, though, and once it pulled away from the bus stop, the traffic was the only thing making noise again.

Things weren't as crowded in Tokyo as Rin had expected them to be, she thought, even though there were a lot of people, and a lot of cars that made everything smell like smoke. People didn't get in each other's way that much.

It was the least crowded in the winter, when the snow fell and the wind was being cruel, even though it wasn't that way on purpose. Most people got less distracted in the snow. Maybe because there was less to get distracted by, since everything was all white, or maybe just because it was too cold to stop and get distracted by things. It didn't stop Rin from getting distracted, but she would have liked it to. Particularly because she found that train of thought to be very distracting.

Rin tilted her head toward the man next to her and looked at the top of his head as it peeked over his magazine. She wondered if anyone else on the bus had given any thought to who he was, or what he was doing there. And then Rin gave thought to it herself.

She looked up at him with a deep breath. "Hello."

He didn't react right away, but after a second he lowered his magazine just enough to look her in the eye.

He tapped one finger a few times before speaking up. "Uh, hi?"

"Who are you?" Rin followed up, sitting up a little.

"Um." He frowned at her. "…Who are _you_?"

"I'm a painter." Rin looked at the floor. "I think."

"Oh…"

"Who are you?" Rin asked again.

"I." He paused for a second. "Well, okay; if you're a painter, I'm a writer."

"What if I'm not a painter?"

He didn't answer at first. "Uh, I guess I'm still a writer?"

"Okay." Rin blinked and looked out the window. "What are you doing on the bus?"

The bus rumbled as it turned a corner, changing directions so that the wind blew snow directly onto the window.

The writer scratched his face, resting the magazine in his lap. "I am, uh… going to go eat with my fiancée during her lunch break. What about you?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know what you're doing on the bus?"

"I don't have somewhere to go."

He did a double take and adjusted his position in his seat to look at her, suddenly frowning. "I'm sorry; are you lost?"

"No."

The writer scratched the back of his head. "Um, did you need something from me?"

"I don't think so. It's just that I thought I should ask who you are, since I was wondering." She continued looking at the floor as she spoke. "If I didn't ask, I would never find out, and then it would be an unanswered question for the rest of eternity."

"You were wondering who I was? Did you think you recognized me?"

"No."

They exchanged a strange glance. The writer fixed his green jacket with one hand.

"Well, I'm not really anybody," he added. "Sorry."

"You're a writer. Doesn't that mean you're somebody?"

"Well. Yeah, I guess." He thought about it for a moment. "You said you're a painter? Are you one of the students from the art school?"

Rin just nodded.

"I've been up to the museum a few times," he continued. "They have student art sometimes; I think it's really interesting. And impressive." He waited again before speaking, and Rin looked up from the floor suddenly to make eye contact with him. "What do you paint?" he asked.

"I'm still figuring it out," Rin said, with a degree of honesty that made her uncomfortable.

"Oh. Well, that's okay." He shrugged. "You're young."

He smiled gently at her.

Rin shook her head, and wet hair got in her eyes. "Even young people have to know what they paint. At least people who are like me." She took a few seconds to think about it. "No… not people who are like me. But people who are doing the things I'm doing. People who are the way I am going to be, eventually."

"And what people are those?"

"Artists."

The bus let out a small beep, and the driver announced an upcoming stop. A couple of the people near the rear exit shuffled to get ready to leave, and Rin pulled in her feet toward her chair the same way.

The writer looked kind of surprised. "Is this your stop?" he asked quietly.

Rin looked at her feet as she prepared to stand. "I don't think I have a stop. I'm not going anywhere in particular."

He didn't seem to understand it, but that was okay, because Rin didn't really understand why she was doing this, either.

"But… you're getting off here?" he asked.

"I guess I will see whether I am when the bus stops."

"Okay." The writer cleared his throat and nodded to her, raising his magazine up again. "Well… I hope you figure things out for yourself."

"Me, too."

The bus stopped, and everyone who was going to disembark did so in a single-file line. And then Rin did, right behind them, out onto the sidewalk. She stood under a tree by the snow-covered bench. Everyone else split up and went in different directions.

A little bit of snow tumbled out of a tree branch and landed in Rin's face, and she sneezed, which shook her hair out. Looking up from the sidewalk, she stared out at the snowy landscape.

Snowflakes completely filled the air, only leaving a few intermittent gaps to see through. Like a direct line from the ground all the way up to the sky, all interconnected.

The snow was just like the rain, just… slower.

It looked like a painting. Rin thought long and hard about how she would describe it, but nothing came to her. The weight of that hit her hard, and all of a sudden she felt exhausted, and kind of sad.

Rin stepped out from under the tree, and the snow blew in her face, and piled on her shoulders, and got in her hair. Her feet sank into the snow on the ground, which wasn't as tightly packed as it was before. Maybe because it was all fresh.

There were no footprints on it, either. For a few moments, Rin thought maybe she was walking on a cloud. Maybe the bus had carried her all the way up into the sky? She closed her eyes to hang onto that thought, and all of a sudden she desperately wanted to paint the feeling. But it wasn't the right kind of thought for that.

Rin simply didn't understand what she was doing wrong- and that was the worst part. There had to be something she was missing; something special that artists had that made their brains and their words and their paintings all fit together. Like a snowstorm.

She opened her eyes, and she was on the ground, in the snow. Her breath trailed up in front of her face, which she could feel turning red from the cold. She knew she wasn't wearing enough clothes, and that made her wonder if she would freeze to death. If she stood in place there long enough, she would get buried in snow. It was the kind of weather you could just disappear into.

Rin sat down in the snow, which instantly made her pants wet. She laid back anyway, and the snow fell directly on her face, forcing her to close her eyes again. She splayed her legs out and just lay there for a minute or so, or maybe longer, or maybe much shorter.

She wondered what kind of things the writer wrote about. Maybe she had read something he had written. Now she would never know.

She sat up, and snow trickled off her back and slipped under her collar, sending chills down her spine. The ends of her ears were numb. If her mother were around, Rin thought, she would be warning about how the cold would give her frostbite, like it was out to get her.

Pulling her legs in close for support, Rin stood, wobbling a little as she struggled to find her footing in the uneven snow.

The corner closest to the bus stop contained a small playground, which would probably get more use in the summer. Nevertheless, a few groups of people hung around in the snow anyway, just to enjoy the open space. Rin decided to join them.

As she stepped away from her spot by the bus stop, she looked over her shoulder at the spot where she had been lying. A snow angel without any wings. Like a little sign saying " _Rin Tezuka was here_."

That made her smile, which surprised her. But she knew it would get buried before too long.

Rin walked up to a swing set that rested along the edge of the playground. It held two ordinary black swings and two smaller ones for babies, but none of them were occupied, save for piles of snow. With one foot, Rin pushed the swing at the end, shaking the snow to the ground. Then she took a seat, allowing the ends of her feet to trace little lines in the snow as she watched the other people in the playground with curiosity.

A little girl, so bundled up in bulky winter clothes that she could barely move her arms, staggered forward in the snow a few feet in front of the swing set. Tripping over her own feet, the girl threw her arms in front of her face, tumbling down and burying herself. A much larger woman helped the girl back to her feet- probably the girl's mother, judging from her height and the funny-looking frown plastered to her face. The girl clung onto her mother's hand and let out a loud, giggly screech, like a chimpanzee.

Then she noticed Rin sitting there. For a moment, Rin maintained eye contact with the girl, but she broke it to look at the mother, who didn't seem to be paying much attention.

Still struggling to walk in the snow, the girl stumbled over toward Rin with a curious expression. Rin lowered her head to look at her.

"What happened to your arms?" asked the girl, trying to fix her hat through heavy woolen mittens.

"Miu! Don't bother her!" The girl's mother grabbed her by the hand and tugged her in the other direction, looking up at Rin with a red face. "Oh, I'm so sorry."

Rin blinked. "Why?"

"I, um." The mother smacked her lips but didn't say anything else.

Rin made eye contact with the little girl- Miu- again. "My arms got cut off when I was a baby."

Miu thought about that for a second. "Who cut them off?"

"A doctor did."

"Why would they do that?"

"I couldn't use them."

"Why not?"

"Because they weren't shaped the right way when I was born. They didn't work right." Rin slumped back on the swing, looking at the knotted sleeves of her sweater. "They were just like that."

"Did it hurt when the doctor cut them off?"

"Maybe. I don't remember. I don't think I remember anything from when I was that little."

"Oh." Miu scrunched up her face and held her hands in front of her eyes, like she had forgotten that she had them. "Is it hard?"

"Is what hard?"

"I mean, is it hard not having arms?"

She lowered her hands, and she and Rin looked right at each other.

"No," Rin replied without much thought.

Miu looked puzzled. "I think it would be hard."

Miu's mother looked down at her with the same mother-like frown she'd had on her face the entire time. She looked up at Rin briefly, but Rin didn't pay her too much attention.

Rin tilted her head to the side a little, resting it against the chain holding up her swing. "…It's what I'm used to."

Miu didn't respond to that; she didn't even seem to think about it. Instead, she fixed her hat again and trotted off toward a patch of snow on the opposite end of the swing set. She left behind narrow tracks in the snow, but she dragged her feet, making them long trails instead of just tiny boot prints.

The mother rested a hand on a pole on the swing set and stayed there to watch her daughter from a short distance. But she stayed behind to talk to Rin a little.

"Thank you for being so patient with her," she said with a hushed voice. "Miu is such a sweet girl… but she isn't very concerned by strangers."

"It's okay. Neither am I." Rin looked at Miu playing in the snow. "What are you doing out here?"

"Oh, I just took her out to play. She was so excited by the snowfall this morning." The mother let out a sigh. "Such beautiful weather… don't you think?"

"Yes."

Rin closed her eyes. Snow kept beating down on her face at an angle, stinging her cheeks.

"Aren't you cold?" asked Miu's mother.

Rin took a little while to answer. "Yes…"

"Then… why aren't you wearing something heavier?"

"…I don't know."

Rin opened her eyes. The mother scratched her face, her frown a little bit softer than before.

Over the phone, Rin had told her mother she wouldn't be coming home that winter. It hadn't turned into a conflict like she had wondered if it would, but at the same time Rin couldn't help but wonder if her mother was upset and just not talking about it. It was impossible for Rin to get along with her when she was like that…

The worst part was that Rin didn't even know whether staying was the right thing for her to do or not. Part of her felt like the right kind of person would have gone home. But home didn't feel like the right kind of place.

"I really shouldn't let her wander too much…" Miu's mother said quietly, gesturing in her daughter's direction. "But I, um… well, I hope you have a nice holiday…"

"Thanks," said Rin.

Miu's mother left the swing set and met her daughter in the snow patch. They held hands, and together they walked a little further away, nearer the center of the playground.

Rin stood from the swing, wincing a little from a gust of wind. Lowering her head instinctively, she looked at the footprints that the pair had left behind. Before long the snow would bury them.

Rin paced in a semi-circle in the snow, standing in a big open white patch in-between the swing set and some more of the playground equipment. She thought about sitting down in the snow again, even though her clothes were already wet and freezing from lying down the first time.

She thought about that feeling for a little while.

Placing one leg a little in front of the other, Rin traced the edge of her shoe along the ground, carving out a little ridge in a straight line.

She wrote kanji in the snow.

 _snow_

It was something that was exactly what it said it was. Nobody could argue that, at least. It described itself.

She stared at it for a long time without moving, not bothered by the snow in her face.

It was the right kind of thought for her. At least for now.


	7. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

**Les Demoiselles d'Avignon**

 _world_

Rin didn't understand much about the world. But she did understand that there was a lot she didn't understand.

When she didn't understand something, she was inclined to imagine an explanation for it instead. That way there would never have to be a gap in her thoughts. Things could always make sense… even if her explanations weren't always true, they could at least be a possibility, even if only to her. But that made them possible enough, since Rin's thoughts were the only ones she ever got to hear, anyway. Disappointing in its own way, but it worked for her.

That was how she used to do things. Imagining explanations. It was a comfortable way of thinking. And sometimes she still did it, when something particularly confusing would strike her. But not on purpose, and not for comfort. It wasn't comfortable anymore. Life was full of mysteries, but as she came to know how much she didn't know, it grew intimidating.

The world didn't work the way it did inside Rin's head. Oftentimes it was the complete opposite. Nobody understood things the way they worked in her head, except for her.

Rin painted falling leaves in front of a tree trunk.

 _leaf_

The leaves spelled it out in red and orange. It took a lot of leaves, some turned in very odd and not-leaf-like positions, to form the shape of the word.

Rin was alone in an art studio, one of many available to students on campus. It was cold and dry and tucked away in a creepy basement. The windows were just thin slits of glass near the top of the ceiling. Afternoon sun squeezed through in little strips, highlighting Rin's collarbone and the sweaty edges of her shirt's neckline.

Rin didn't know that she could explain why she was painting leaves specifically, especially not in the coldest time of winter when all the leaves outside had already fallen and all the trees were already lonely. She didn't know that she even understood.

But she was most definitely painting _leaves_ \- that _was_ what they were, that was what Rin did understand, and that was what she could have no doubt in her mind about. That was a fact that couldn't be disputed by anyone.

Rin spent so much time trying to understand how to fit her words together in order to explain her thoughts, but for nothing. In the meantime, she just tried to think things that her words could already explain.

One day, eventually, maybe, she would come around.

Eventually, she would need to.

For the time being, she dipped the end of her brush into a pool of cardinal red on her palette and traced it along the base of a falling leaf.

She did this for a very long time. Or… at least for what _seemed_ like a very long time- so long a time that she could not remember what else she had done that day but paint. But Rin had lost touch with time lately, so it was hard to tell for sure.

By the time someone else entered the room, the little strips of sunlight had moved away from Rin's collar and across the wall to a spot near the corner.

Rin didn't even turn around to look as the door opened and shut.

"Hey, Rin!" It was Yumi's voice. "Me again." There was a slight pause as the girl walked further into the studio, her echoing footsteps breaking up the silence. "Um… would you mind if I painted in here for a little while? I'm behind on my work for the exhibition."

Rin stared at the leaves, reading the word written on it over and over as though it concealed some menacing hidden meaning that she didn't intend.

"I don't mind," she mumbled.

"Cool. Thanks." Yumi walked over to one of the tables near the wall to grab a painting of her own.

Lots of student art was stored in the studios in the academic buildings, including some of Rin's. Usually students didn't even bother to look at anyone's but their own.

Something loud and heavy hit the floor, and Rin finally turned her head to see Yumi setting up an easel. She was painting her watercolors. Still amaryllis, or so it looked like, though flowers could be hard to tell apart.

"Look at all these," said Yumi, gesturing to some of the student art lying face-up on a table. "It's kind of crazy to think about… if one of our classmates ended up super famous, any one of these could be worth an absolute fortune someday."

Rin took a breath. "You'd think that if a painting were going to be worth a fortune someday, it would be worth a fortune now. Since it's supposed the art itself that's special. But people are a lot more interested even in an ordinary painting if it comes from a person that they were already interested in to begin with."

"Kind of a shame, isn't it?"

"Yes."

That made Rin uncomfortable, so she didn't say anything more about it. Yumi gritted her teeth like she was going to say something else, but then she didn't say anything, either. At a loss, Rin continued to paint leaves.

Things were quiet for a little while, and then Yumi mumbled, "'Leaves'," reading the single word sprawled across Rin's canvas.

"That's what they are," Rin explained, without looking back.

"It certainly is." Yumi's chair creaked as she leaned over in it. "That's really interesting."

Rin went quiet. Something about the way she said that didn't seem right, but it took Rin a minute to think hard enough about it to puzzle out why.

"…Are you making fun of me?" Rin eventually asked, not inflecting.

"What? Oh my gosh, no!" Yumi seemed startled by the question. "No, I… I really meant that. It's interesting, the stuff you paint. The stuff you've been painting, I mean. _Snow_ , too. Your whole theme. It's so neat. And… inspired. I dunno. Makes me feel kinda silly painting flowers."

Leaves. Snow. Flowers. Rin was abruptly stricken with a sense of alarm.

With wide eyes, she turned her head to the side, and the two girls exchanged an intimate glance.

Why would Rin's painting make Yumi feel silly? Any sense of competition in art always made Rin feel sick to her stomach. People would talk about it like it was something one person could beat another at, like they were playing baseball. …Which didn't even make sense, because Rin couldn't throw a ball in the first place.

"Inspired," Rin repeated, off-put.

With two fingers, Yumi brushed a strand of brown hair behind her ear, breaking her gaze with Rin. "Looking at what you create. It does… like, what it's supposed to." She spoke more softly now. "I mean, it… evokes. That's what art is supposed to do. You're supposed to look at it, and feel like it's coming from the soul." She touched her chest. "The stuff you paint feels like that. That's what I'm trying to say. I wish my paintings felt like that."

Rin didn't quite know what a soul was, even though she'd tried to imagine it before. The thought that it was reflected in her painting, though- that much seemed possible to her. If Rin had a soul, there could be no easier way to find it.

But Rin felt something when she looked at Yumi's paintings, too. There was something so Yumi-ish about them, something which Rin had already been trying for so long to take in and understand in words. Yumi's soulless paintings. Flowers.

If Rin felt something looking at them, she wondered, how could she expect anyone to understand her own art? See Rin as Rin did? It had to be possible, but for the time being, she was as lost as ever.

 _flower_

All in one moment, it occurred to her that she really hadn't changed at all, and she was no more of a real artist than she had ever been, and that she had been avoiding having to think about it because she had known it all along.

Could it be enough to explain her art to someone else? Or would she have to understand it differently, too, like everyone else did? Rin had hoped her thinking would change naturally as she did, that thinking different things would change the thoughts that appeared in her brain on their own, but she had never managed to change at all. She had never destroyed herself- she had never even really tried.

"…How do you know what other people are feeling when they look at what I paint? Or… what _you_ paint…?" Rin asked, gaze shifting away from Yumi's face toward the amaryllis.

"I don't. I just know what _I'm_ feeling," Yumi explained. "It's just that my inspiration for painting is too… shallow, you know? Like I'm not digging deep enough into my psyche, or… something."

Yumi stuck out her lips like she was trying to kiss the air in front of her. Her eyes were fixed on something out of sight.

Rin looked at her with wide eyes. "Are you depressed?"

The two exchanged another glance.

"…What?" Yumi asked sharply, head snapping to the side. "Why would you ask me that?"

"I don't know," said Rin.

"Rin, I think-" Yumi cut herself off. "I was hoping I could ask you, while I was down here… have you been sleeping in here? There were a few nights where you didn't come back to our room, and you didn't tell me anything, and I-"

"I thought you came here to paint."

"I did. But I also thought it would be good to talk, while we're both here painting."

"But you're not painting now."

Yumi hesitated to respond to that, twirling the brush between her fingers and gnawing on her bottom lip. "I will. I'm just making conversation first."

Rin was exhausted by the conversation, but then she didn't feel like talking in the first place. To be fair, she rarely did.

"I _did_ sleep in here." She turned away again.

"…Why?"

Rin frowned, a little bit confused by the question. "…Because I was tired."

"No, I mean… why did…?" groaned Yumi. "-I'm sorry. I feel like we're talking around each other. I… I guess I'm not good at this. Look…" She opened and closed her mouth, reaching a hand to her hair again just to fidget with it as she searched for the right words. "I haven't seen you around much lately. You've been coming down here a lot. Working on the exhibition a lot. I just thought I should check on you. But I'm not very good at being subtle. So I guess I'm making you feel weird."

"You are."

"Sorry," Yumi sighed. "I'm being really nosy, I know. I can't help it, I guess; it's a bad habit of mine. Kichiro told me I need to cut that shit out or I'm going to make you really upset." She raised a finger and pointed it at the ceiling "…Which would be totally understandable, by the way."

"I'm not upset. I just don't understand." Rin looked at the floor. "People act this way with me a lot. Not just you. My mother. And."

Rin decided against mentioning anyone else, after a little thought.

"Oh, man. Look, I don't want to get in the middle of anything with you and your mom." Yumi scratched behind her ear with a pout. "You don't talk about your home life very much. Or about anything you did before you came here, really. I totally get that. I know I've only known you since the beginning of the fall. If it's private, it's private. I respect your boundaries." Smacking her lips, she craned her neck a little bit and made eye contact with Rin, slowing down her speech. "…That said. If you want to know."

"I want to know." Rin was very still. Her foot lowered from her canvas, dripping cardinal red on the floor in thick droplets, like blood.

"My little sister went through… some really hard times, just a few years ago. We're really close, all my sisters. We raised each other." Yumi shrugged. "But she mostly stopped talking to us, and just started acting really different. It should have been really obvious, but nobody really gave it too much thought, not even my parents. So she felt really isolated. And because of that…" Yumi mumbled at the end, until she was too quiet to hear. She chewed on her fingernail for a second. "Uh, because of that, things were a lot harder for her than they should have been. And I guess I feel kind of guilty for that. Like… I should have been paying more attention. I mean, me and my family. We all should have. We should've been looking out for each other." She tilted her head to the side, and her long hair fell down at her side, draping over her shoulder. "Family's the most important thing, you know? And when you're away from home, your friends are like your second family. Do you know what I mean?"

Rin wasn't sure that she had any friends, but she at least knew her family well enough to consider the question. "No."

That prompted a loud sigh. "Alright, well. What I'm trying to say is this. I don't know about your mom. Or anyone else. But for me personally? You seem like you're in distress. And it's hard to see someone in distress. And when you feel like you can be doing something to help, it's even harder. That's all."

She took a breath.

"You can't help me," Rin said bluntly.

"…Sorry." Yumi hung her head low.

The two were quiet for a little while, and Rin went back to painting. Yumi didn't seem to do much of anything, though admittedly Rin paid very little attention to her.

Shifting her ankle, Rin traced a curve along the bottom of the word on her canvas. A stem gave way to a large, branching leaf that splayed in three directions. It overlapped with another, and together the two extended toward the bottom of the tree trunk.

 _leaf_

Rin narrowed her eyes at her own painting. She was satisfied with what she had done, but uncomfortable still. Something rested uneasily in her stomach, like she had swallowed something small and heavy and made of lead.

Yumi spoke again. "I just think it's important to talk. That's at least something to think about."

Rin shook her head without even thinking. "I don't want to talk. Never want to. Not good at it."

…Which was the problem, it occurred to Rin a moment later.

Rin set her brush down and slid back in her chair, resting both her feet on the cold floor. A tiny puddle of cardinal red had formed there after dripping from the end of her brush, and she could feel it painting the bottom of her toe.

She turned in her chair to face Yumi, but found it difficult to look directly at her.

"Do you believe people can change what they are?" Rin swallowed, looking at the little strips of sunlight in the corner of the room. "I mean. Not what they are. But what they think. _How_ they think. Really change it. Not just the words they use, but…"

"…Yeah. Yeah, I do, Rin." Yumi nodded slowly, lips curling up into a tiny smile. "It's about changing your attitude." She shifted in her seat a little to try and make eye contact with Rin, who avoided her. "…In case you were wondering, my sister is doing great."

"I wasn't wondering."

"Hmph."

Rin looked into Yumi's vibrant eyes for a fraction of a second, then turned in her seat again, legs positioned lamely underneath her easel.

"Another month," she mumbled.

"Until the exhibition, you mean?"

Rin _had_ meant that, and she was a little surprised that Yumi had understood.

"Are you ready?" Yumi asked.

"No. But I will be. I need to be; it's-" Rin stumbled over her words. "Everything will be finished when it's finished."

"I don't know what you mean."

Rin didn't answer- she was barely listening.

"I'm not ready yet," Yumi continued. "I need to pick up the pace. But we still have plenty of time now. It's going to be big, that's for sure."

"Yes."

"You're going to do just fine."

"I hope so."

"Are you nervous?"

"Yes."

"Me, too. I guess that's to be expected. But I'm just gonna give it my best." Yumi shrugged. "I think that's the right approach. That's how you stop yourself from worrying too much. It's just another thing. When it's over, it's just. Over."

"Everything is finished."

"Hm," Yumi hummed uncomfortably. "And then what?"

Rin didn't answer.


	8. Great Wave Off Kanagawa

**Great Wave Off Kanagawa**

Rin painted and painted and painted, and then it was the night of the spring exhibition, just like that.

 _world_

 _Rin Tezuka_

She had a sign, a little white one with golden edges, which guarded the entrance to her display in the corner of the first floor. The 'Rin Tezuka' exhibit. A rope partition prevented people from stepping too close to her paintings, or touching them.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, all nineteen of the other students with exhibits were bustling in throughout the first floor of the art museum, which was closed off specifically for the student exhibitions that evening.

Rin was not bustling. Since she couldn't carry her art herself, Yumi and Kichiro had already brought all her paintings to her corner, and the museum staff had already set them up on three walls.

"' _World_ '. Have you traveled much?" someone asked.

Rin turned around to find Kichiro standing behind her with his hands on his hips. He was looking over her shoulder, at her art. The exhibition wasn't open yet- he was supposed to be there to help Yumi, who was nowhere to be seen.

Not sure what to think, Rin looked at him a long time before responding, turning away. "No. I lived in the same place for most of my life." She paused. "Tokyo is the furthest I've traveled."

The two stood side-by-side.

Kichiro nodded once. "Wish you could travel more?"

"I don't know."

"I've always wanted to go to Italy."

"Why?"

"Always thought it seemed nice. Gondola rides and old architecture and all that. I don't think I really have a good reason, since I don't know much about it." He scratched his chin after saying that, chuckling quietly. "Now that I'm thinking about it, I guess I should probably be saying that it's because of all that rich art history. Da Vinci and Botticelli and everyone." He gave a halfhearted shrug, the kind Rin was highly accustomed to making herself. "Ah… whatever."

Rin didn't say anything else; she was much too focused on her paintings. She imagined the questions she might be asked, but couldn't imagine answers to them. Her thoughts got muggier and blacker in her head the harder she tried to focus on them. She felt like passing out, and briefly wondered if her head would crack open if it hit the tile on the floor. It was sleek and black and pretty. Rin imagined a little splatter of cardinal red.

At some point she realized that Yumi was squeaking loudly behind her, having apparently crossed over to Rin's side of the dividing wall between their art displays. Rin wondered how long she had been standing there.

"How do I look?" Yumi asked, throwing her hands out to the side to allow Rin and Kichiro to look at her.

She was wearing a pale green dress with polka dots on it. She looked like a school teacher, the kind that smelled like dessert and would laugh just for no reason.

"You look cute!" Kichiro said, kissing Yumi on the cheek and resting a hand on her shoulder as he brushed past.

He wandered toward the dividing wall to move to Yumi's exhibit, and both girls followed behind him, Rin trailing in the back.

"How do you feel?" he asked, glancing at his girlfriend over his shoulder.

"I feel like I'm going to throw up. But I think that's normal." Yumi put her hands on her hips, then raised one to gesture to the watercolor paintings partitioned off at her display. "I painted eight. Eight is good, right? Eight is enough…"

"Eight is enough," Kichiro replied with a nod.

Yumi ignored him. "Rin, how many did you paint?"

"Eleven," Rin replied flatly.

"…Shit."

"It's not a competition, Yumi. Come on, now." Kichiro rubbed his forehead, gesturing to Yumi's wall of art with his other hand. "What you have is just fine."

"I don't want _fine_ ; I want something that belongs on the wall of an art museum."

"Which is what you _have_. Kind of what I was trying to imply."

"You're just saying that."

"I'm not. Your art is great. Don't doubt yourself now; how long have you spent working on these watercolors?"

"Long enough that I want your actual opinion."

"Oh, for- every time with this. Why do I even bother?" He let out a loud groan and put a hand in his hair, mussing it up. "Alright… can I tell you something, Yumi? In a couple hours, they are going to open those doors, and a billion people you don't know are going to walk through here with the _express_ purpose of critiquing you. I am _not_ one of those people. It's not my job to critique you. It's my job to _support_ you. That is the whole reason I'm here. Alright? So, honestly." He pressed two fingers to his temple. " _Honestly_ … does it really _matter_ what I think?"

He took his hand out of his hair and leaned down a little bit in front of Yumi, putting him closer to eye-level with her. The two stared at each other for a very long time.

Rin stood next to the wall. Her knotted sleeves draped over the sides of her legs. She didn't say anything.

"Meh," said Yumi.

Kichiro tapped a hand to his chest. "Hey, I'm _here_ , aren't I? That's got to count for something."

"You know what? You _are_ here. And I appreciate it. I appreciate you." Yumi pressed her index finger to his chest and smiled at him. "…But… I am still nervous as shit."

"Everyone is nervous. It's natural. But it's like I said. You're gonna do great." He held his palms over her elbows and leaned his head in to kiss her on the lips. "You're gonna do great! You know that, c'mon. Deep breaths." He patted a hand on her forearm.

"Deep breaths," Yumi repeated with a huff, shuffling a little bit. "…You nervous, Rin?"

But Rin had already stopped paying attention to them.

Yumi had a sign, too:

 _Hues of Spring_

 _Yumi Ono_

Her smaller number of paintings made them easier to arrange squarely on three walls. Rin thought the display was beautiful. It was all nature- bushes, and amaryllis, and a cherry blossom, but the colors were all bright and artificial. Like a wall of neon trees, sprouting out of the ground and blooming with electric blossoms. It seemed right for the Yumi Ono exhibit.

"Earth to Rin," said Yumi.

"Hm." Rin turned to face her.

"You alright?"

"No." Rin squinted, Yumi's wide, powerful gaze boring into her. Unwilling to maintain eye contact, she turned her head to look at the display again. "I don't know."

"You see?" said Kichiro. "Everyone is nervous. It's a big deal. It's normal to be nervous. But you guys are both gonna do great."

That sounded like a lie, Rin thought. One of the lies she had been trying to get used to telling. Rin didn't understand why other people told them, but she wanted to get good at them anyway.

Yumi and Kichiro kept talking to each other, but Rin didn't listen to them.

Months of preparation had gone into her eleven paintings, just for people to look at it for one night. Rin didn't know what it would mean to do great, but she did know that it would be impossible for Rin to do it. If she did, after all, she couldn't be Rin anymore- that was exactly what she had been preparing for.

* * *

At five o'clock in the afternoon, Rin found herself in front of her own art display again, lingering behind Yumi and Kichiro, who were standing side-by-side. The two were talking about their upcoming graduation. Rin listened to them, fascinated by their ability to distract themselves from the exhibition. But she never lost focus on it, herself- she refused to, if it were even possible, which she doubted.

Rin's professor had been going from display to display for a long time, and she had watched him with curiosity out of the corner of her eye. Eventually he approached Yumi's display, but, finding no one there, crossed over to Rin's display instead, throwing up his hands and putting a broad smile on his face.

"Hey! Ladies! You're the last two I was looking for." Chishiki lowered his hands and used them to brush out his plaid jacket, the top layer of some funny-looking formal clothes. "Congratulations on making it this far! I know you guys have put in a lot of work to get everything ready."

Yumi stepped in front of Rin with a smile. "Thank you, sir!"

"Your display looks great, Ono! Was just having a look at it before I stepped over here. I come to the spring exhibition every year, but I've never organized it before. Exciting, right? It's a blast seeing what students come up with each time. And the displays are a lot bigger this year than in exhibitions past. That's the benefit of the small number of participating students."

He held his hands together as he spoke, looking the three students in front of him up and down. Still standing right in front of Rin, Yumi scratched the back of her head, tugging on a strand of hair.

Chishiki took a step toward her, but tilted his head toward Kichiro, his eyes narrowed. "Ah! Well, if it isn't… er…" He clenched his fist fiercely, swinging it once in front of his face. "Ah… Kobayashi! Kobayashi, that's right." He smacked his lips. "I'm so sorry; you just… caught me off-guard. I didn't expect to see you here! Certainly not so early… unless one of the other organizers set you up with a display I didn't hear about?"

"No! No, no; no display. I'm just, um, here to support my girlfriend." Kichiro rubbed a hand on Yumi's arm, but flinched at his own words after a moment and cleared his throat. "-Uh, and to get an opportunity to have a look at all the other students' displays, of course."

"Oh, you don't have to pretend around me." Chishiki flashed a toothy grin. "Don't worry; not even the most passionate among us enjoys standing around in a museum all day long. I suggested they give the students chairs, but the other faculty ignored me. Though I suppose it's good training for a career in art, right?" He shrugged. "Well, I suppose love conquers all, at any rate. …At least, that's what my wife would say, but then, it's not like I could ever convince _her_ to come to one of these."

Kichiro smiled with his teeth clenched tight, like he had something sour in his mouth. Nobody said anything for a couple of seconds.

"…You're allowed to laugh, guys," Chishiki added with a little frown.

Yumi and Kichiro both gave an awkward chuckle. Rin laughed, too, a moment later, even though she didn't understand why. It apparently wasn't the right thing to do, since everyone stared at her afterward.

"Anyway, I'm glad you came, Kobayashi," Chishiki mumbled, cupping his hands together. "The more the merrier. I'm always encouraging non-participating students to attend this exhibition. I'm expecting high attendance this year."

"I have heard a lot of people making a fuss about it," Kichiro replied, tucking his hands into his pockets. "I think you're right about high attendance."

"It's nice to hear that. It can be hard to gauge student interest from my position, since, y'know, everyone just tells me what I want to hear."

Rin took a few steps forward, and her chest brushed against one of Yumi's shoulder blades. Standing on her toes, she leaned to the side to read a big, laminated sign, which was positioned by another student's display across the room.

 _Student art is not for sale_

She furrowed her brow.

Chishiki gave her a serious look. "Something wrong, Tezuka?"

"No," Rin replied immediately. "Why is student art not for sale?"

"We don't like to break up the displays in the middle of the night. But, more importantly, I think it's important for students to view the event as a networking opportunity, rather than a chance to sell the art pieces they made specifically for this exhibition." He crossed his arms as he explained it, like he was puzzling it out at the same time. "Does that make sense?"

"I guess so." Rin didn't understand what compelled people to sell art in the first place, but she lied to prevent him from trying to explain it any further.

"Didn't you sell art at the exhibition you did at your last school?"

"Yes. One painting."

"Yeah. I understand if it feels like a bit of a step backwards, in that case. I'm sorry for that." Chishiki shrugged. "It's all part of a 'school event', so maybe it feels a bit less… professional… than whatever you did last. But I promise, I have observed firsthand that it is consistently useful for developing artists like yourselves. Networking, like I said. It's really important. I can't overstate it."

"I understand," Rin lied again.

They looked each other sharply in the eye. Rin's were wrenched open.

Chishiki thought for a moment, then looked away. "Anyway, things will be getting started pretty soon. I just wanted to go around and make sure everyone was here that was supposed to be here, and give a little moral support."

"Doors open at six, right?" asked Yumi.

"That's right. The general exhibition-goers will be in and out for a while. But you should know: I got word that we are getting a visit from a pretty prominent gallerist later on in the evening, Mr. Genichi Fukuhara. He's an alumnus, and a donor, so… be on your best behavior." Chishiki chuckled, even though nobody else did. "Uh… but seriously. He couldn't make it last year, so it's pretty exciting to have him stop by. He's kind of a bloodhound for young talent, so it's important to try to present yourself like a real professional. Get your name out there."

"Sounds like a good opportunity," Yumi said quietly.

"No kidding! Tonight is the real deal."

Chishiki walked past her so he could stand closer to Rin's display. He put his hands to look on it, and Yumi and Kichiro took a step back at the same time to allow Rin to approach him. She did, uncertainly.

"So this is what you've been working on, eh? Really neat… not what I was expecting," he mumbled.

Rin responded quietly. "I worked really, really hard on it."

"I'm sure you did. I knew I could count on you to impress me tonight, Tezuka. This is really something. ' _World_ '." He looked down at her, smiling. "I have my own questions, but I think you'll be getting plenty of that soon enough. Good work."

Her eyelids fluttered. "…Thank you."

"I'm going to make the rounds again. You guys seem more than ready for everything to get under way." Very gently patting Rin on the shoulder, Chishiki turned back to Yumi and Kichiro and stepped away from the display, now sporting a huge smile. "I'll be in the crowd of guests if you need my help or have any questions about anything. Break a leg, guys."

He left them standing together. Kichiro still had his hand on Yumi's arm.

Rin wriggled her toes in her tight shoes, her eyes following her teacher as he disappeared into a crowd of museum staff.

* * *

At six o'clock in the evening, the doors opened to the general public. The exhibition was supposed to last for two hours. It seemed like it would go on forever from the moment it started.

Rin was already tired of standing. She had a feeling in her chest like a terrible storm was closing in, but she was indoors, so that couldn't be exactly right.

Museum staff in red uniforms let guests pour in through the entrance, which was on the opposite end of the room from Rin's display. They were mostly dressed in grey and black, all formal, and familiar, too. They were just like the sorts of people that had come to her last exhibition. But there were far more of them, and they were more interested in the displays close to the entrance than in Rin's, at least at first.

Chishiki stood among a few other teachers that Rin had never spoken to. She saw him point in her direction as he spoke to a few guests, before he waved his hand to gesture to the rest of the back row of student displays.

It took a long time before anyone made it all the way over to the back, where the Rin Tezuka exhibit sat. It was a man with product in his hair. He came alone, while two other people walked past to look at Yumi's display.

Hands on his hips, the man leaned in toward the sign to read it, and then he turned to smile at Rin.

She closed her eyes and said what she had rehearsed. "Hello. Thank you for coming. I mean. I'm Rin. Tezuka. Thank you for coming."

"I'm happy to be here. This is a fascinating exhibition. It's nice to relax and appreciate someone else's hard work for a change," he chuckled.

"Do you think art is relaxing?" Rin flinched at the sound of her own voice, painfully aware of the fact that she was supposed to be answering questions and not asking them.

The man squinted at her and then shrugged a little. "What, you don't think so?"

Rin's heart rate spiked.

"I don't- I don't know." She breathed loudly. "Maybe it is relaxing." Her eyes fluttered. "I'm sorry. I don't know."

The man touched his fingers together and didn't say anything. Rin looked away from him. The clamoring from the guests at the other displays sounded like thunder.

When she looked back to him, he was fixating on her rather than on her art.

He spoke quietly. "I'm sorry- you said you're Rin Tezuka?"

"Yes."

He nodded a few times. "…You painted this?"

"Yes."

"I, uh. Wow. Interesting." The man straightened out his jacket and looked at the paintings again, smiling like she had told him good news. "I just mean… well, that's really impressive! Do you paint with your feet?"

"Yes."

"…Wow!" He laughed. "Huh… well, thank you for sharing this with me."

She wasn't sure what to say next. "You're welcome."

The man left without saying anything else, though he did give her a little wave first.

She turned away from him. Her mouth kept opening and closing, but she couldn't figure out whether she was trying to say something or not.

Rin thought about the exhibition she did when she went to Yamaku. It smelled like dust and soap. Everyone was so close to each other.

The museum smelled like dust and soap, too, but colder and fresher, like whatever ice would smell like if it smelled like something.

More people arrived at her display while she reminisced about it, first another man in grey, then a young couple a few seconds later. They seemed more interested in talking to each other than to Rin, but she closed in on them anyway to greet them, working as hard as she possibly could.

"Hello. Thank you for coming." Rin spoke to the woman of the pair, then cleared her throat and looked over at the man at her arm. "–Thank you for coming."

"Hello," the two of them said in unison.

They passed her by, chattering to each other, and examined the display with smiles on their faces. They kept looking back to stare at Rin.

She turned to walk to the other man at the display, but as she did, she heard more people approach from behind.

A lot more people. A whole crowd of them. Men and women, all in one group and all as old as her parents. One of them pointed a finger at her. Everyone was looking now.

"Hello-!" said Rin.

Something caught in her throat, and she squeaked her words, like Yumi usually did.

She swallowed. "-Thank you for coming."

"Thank you," one of the women in the group replied.

The crowd parted in the middle and spread out around her, crowding behind the rope partitions that blocked off her paintings.

Someone loomed over her. "You painted this?"

"Yes," Rin said with dry lips.

"Where did you come up with the concept? It's unusual."

"I." She hesitated.

Someone else interrupted before she could think about it. "Interesting use of color. The paintings seem really monochromatic. Was that intentional, or was it a consequence of the subjects you chose?"

"What about the subjects? It's meant to be representative of the world? Why the emphasis on elements of nature?" someone else asked.

That one was two, maybe three questions.

Rin said something, or at least meant to, but didn't hear her own words. A few people talked to each other without looking at her. A few people talked to her. She didn't look at any one person, and before long she had accidentally drawn everyone's attention with her attempts to answer even a single question.

Everyone was staring at her. Everyone in her crowd. Nine people, or eleven people- Rin tried to count them, but her hair fell in front of her eyes, and then she couldn't keep them open, and then she couldn't look at them, and she was staring at the floor. Her shoes were too tight. She couldn't move her toes. It had been too long since her toenails had been cut.

When she had painted _world_ , she had talked to herself. Asking questions and pretending to be different people. The questions she thought of made sense at the time, but she didn't even know whether they were the kinds of questions she would be asked.

Why did she paint what she painted? It was always on her mind, because it always seemed to be on _everyone's_ mind. Rin thought about the snowstorm in December.

She felt like everyone in the whole room was staring at her, and then beyond that. Like the world didn't extend beyond the walls, and the earth wasn't spinning, and her words were the only ones, and even then, she still couldn't find them.

Rin thought about falling to her knees. The floor looked uncomfortable. Rin thought about going home, but she wouldn't know where to go even if she did. Everyone was looking at her, but nobody knew what to think about her, even though her brain was splattered all over the wall in green, blue, white, black, cardinal red.

Rin thought about Nomiya. Rin thought about the painting hanging over her bed. The one with all the black paint. The one Yumi said was nice. Rin thought about her beach painting.

Rin thought about Hisao.

Then she spoke.

"When I started painting," said Rin, "when I was a little girl, I painted whenever I wanted to without taking any time to think about it. I painted on the walls in my house. People yelled at me- my parents. I was just painting whatever things I thought of, whenever I thought of them. It was easy for me to understand the things I painted. I didn't think about what I was doing. I mean. I did think. But I was just painting and thinking at the same time. That's how I learned to do it. So the things I thought- they were also the things I painted. When I look at my paintings, I see my thoughts. But that isn't how it works for everyone. People only think their own thoughts, all the time. So even when they look at the same painting in front of them, they don't think the same things. That means other people don't see paintings the way I see them, even when they're the paintings that I made. So I can't know what they mean when someone else looks at them."

Rin stopped talking for a moment, her chest heaving as she caught her breath. Everyone kept looking at her, and she tried to keep her eyes on people's faces.

"This is something different," she said loudly. "I painted what I thought. But I thought what I saw. And I saw what everyone sees. This is ' _world_ '. Everyone is from the world. So this is something to everyone. This means something to everyone. That's why I made it the way I did. _World_ is an everyone exhibit. It's not a Rin Tezuka exhibit."

She looked at her display again. Nobody in the crowd was talking.

"It's not a Rin Tezuka exhibit," she said again.

* * *

At seven o'clock in the evening, the crowds had died down a little, since the people who were most interested in the student displays had showed up as soon as the exhibition opened. Only a few people stopped by at a time, and most didn't seem interested in hearing what Rin had to say.

Rin had said a lot, anyway. More than she had ever said about anything she had ever painted, to more people. Her brain felt like fire, but she wondered if maybe it had been that way for a long time, and now her thoughts were just like the little smoke clouds the morning after a rainstorm.

When there was nobody left at her display, Rin walked over to Yumi's display, instead. Yumi was talking to a guest. Kichiro was leaning on the wall with his eyes closed, making a face he sometimes made when Yumi looked away from him.

Rin's shoes made loud footsteps, and Kichiro opened his eyes sharply when he heard them. He grinned when he saw her. Rin took a step back as he approached her.

"How are you doing, Rin?" he asked.

"I have no idea," she replied.

He laughed quietly and gestured over his shoulder to Yumi, who wasn't paying any attention to the two of them. "That's probably what Yumi would say, too. She's killing it, though. She has been running around with her hair on fire talking to everyone that shows up, and I think it's paying off, because most people have seemed really interested in her work." He sighed. "She deserves a win, you know? She has been working her ass off for this."

"How do you win?" Rin asked.

"I wish I knew."

"Me, too."

They stared at each other for a few moments.

The man Yumi was talking to laughed about something and walked away in the opposite direction from Rin's display. On second glance, Rin recognized him from earlier in the night. He hadn't seemed too interested in Rin's art.

Yumi brushed out her hands over the bottom of her dress, bending down a little bit to try and touch her toes. Then she walked up to Rin and Kichiro.

"How's it going, Yumi?" Kichiro asked with a laugh.

She rubbed her face with both hands. "I'm dying."

He pulled her close to him and held her hand, earning a little smile from her. "Better you than me."

"Wow. You always know _just_ what to say." Yumi batted her eyelashes and looked past him. "How are things going for you, Rin?"

Rin looked at Kichiro before speaking, and hesitated to. "Fine."

Kichiro gritted his teeth, but Yumi didn't seem to notice. She was watching her display, instead, and got distracted by two more people coming to look at it- a young-looking businessman, followed by Chishiki. That in and of itself distracted Rin.

"Um, hello, sir!" Yumi exclaimed, hurrying away from Kichiro and letting her hand fall away from his. "Hello, professor!"

"Hi, guys!" Chishiki smiled, but he looked a little nervous. He ducked behind the younger man as he introduced him. "I mentioned Mr. Fukuhara; you all remember?"

Yumi's eyes opened wide. "Oh, my gosh! Thank you for coming!"

Fukuhara looked at everyone in front of him and waved, though he ultimately focused on Yumi. "Thank you! I'm happy to be here; I enjoy student art. Good evening, everyone."

Kichiro waved at him and mumbled 'hello'. Rin didn't do either.

With a forced cough, Chishiki covered his mouth with his fist and took a step backward, away from Yumi's display. "Well, I don't want to distract you, so I'll leave you to it. You'll meet with the faculty when you're finished, Mr. Fukuhara?"

"Right. Good night." Fukuhara waved a hand behind him, and Chishiki wandered away, like a dog that had been let off its leash.

The young gallerist didn't look like Rin had expected. He was tall, and handsome, and clean shaven, and probably good at math. She didn't know what to make of him, but she watched intently.

He approached Yumi's display without waiting for her, tucking his hands into his jacket and fixating on an amaryllis painting. Kichiro walked slowly backward, away from the display, until he was almost out in the open floor space outside the walls of Yumi's area. Rin didn't know where to be, so she walked with him.

Yumi walked up close to Fukuhara and cupped her hands behind her back, bouncing on her toes a little. "I'm sorry; I don't think I introduced myself, but I'm Yumi Ono."

"It says as much on the sign," Fukuhara replied seriously.

"Right, right." She separated her hands and held them in front of her. "Um, so, this is a collection of watercolors that I have been experimenting with for… um…"

Fukuhara raised one hand in the air, keeping the other coolly in his jacket pocket. Yumi trailed off as he did, stammering uncertainly.

When she stopped speaking, he finally turned to look at her, lowering his hand. "I'm sorry. Just a moment, please."

Yumi gulped. "…Right, I'm sorry…"

He turned back to stare at her paintings again. She hovered around him uncertainly for a very long time. Kichiro rubbed a hand over his arm, not looking away from them.

Rin had difficulty keeping track of time, but Fukuhara's silence seemed to go on for at least a few minutes, five or maybe more. Far longer than she had expected. He simply moved from one painting to the next, studying each one without saying anything. Yumi stared at _him_ with the same level intensity.

After a very long time, she gave a half-frown, half-smile, and said, "Um, do you have any questions?"

He looked at her for the first time in a while. "…No, I don't think so."

"Oh. Okay."

It was another few minutes after that before he finally turned to walk away, nodding silently in response to some imaginary question.

"Ono, right?" Fukuhara asked quietly. "Very pleasant display. Have a nice evening."

"Oh?" Suddenly panicked, Yumi scurried in front of him, wiping her hands on her dress. "Is- did you- what did you think?"

He scratched his chin, studying her. "It was a very pleasant display. Fine work."

He turned to leave again, and Yumi's face sank. She followed behind him for another few steps as he walked.

"Um!" Yumi squeaked. "-Um, I'm sorry, but please, sir, could you just tell me your thoughts? I just would really like to hear…"

Fukuhara stopped dead in his tracks, opening and closing a fist in front of me as he contemplated her question.

"Okay." He turned around to face her and grimaced. "…Honestly, Ono, if you insist on an explanation, it's trite. The art is trite. I don't have much to say. I always encourage young people to explore their talents, but this collection does not impress me." He adjusted his cuffs uncomfortably, letting out a sigh. "But I don't want to discourage you. Keep searching for inspiration." He half-turned, then looked back at her. "You have a nice evening."

He walked away, and Yumi nearly stumbled forward as she moved to follow him. Kichiro touched her on the shoulder to stop her. Her bottom lip quivered a little, and she bit down on it.

Rin left them alone to follow Fukuhara.

Hands still in his pockets, he heard Rin's loud footsteps and glanced over his shoulder, pouting at her.

"I'm sorry, can I help you?" he asked sternly.

"I don't know," said Rin with a shrug.

"Why are you following me?"

"You were heading for my art display."

"Oh! You're one of the students!" He looked her up and down, then brushed a hand through his hair. "I'm so sorry, I- er, I didn't mean to presume anything. What's your name?"

"Rin Tezuka." The pair stopped in front of Rin's sign, and she gestured to it. "It's on my sign."

"So it is. Well, thank you for being forward. Sometimes I think people find me intimidating."

He laughed, and Rin laughed, too, for some reason.

Stepping past Rin, his eyes scanned the sign, and he positioned himself behind the rope partitions, focusing on the _snow_ painting. Rin stood behind him and looked at it, too. She still couldn't figure out what to think about this man, but she liked that he didn't talk while he was looking at art. She usually didn't, either, especially lately.

Once again, Fukuhara went for a very long time without saying anything as he studied the paintings on the wall.

Unlike at Yumi's display, though, he spoke up halfway through, while he was still looking.

"How would you describe this?" he asked, taking a hand out of his pocket to gesture at the art in front of him.

Rin was quick to answer. "It's my art display."

"Ha! Fair enough." He snickered, looking at the sign again. "So…' _World_ '. Where does that title come from?"

"It's what the paintings are about."

"Right."

They exchanged a little glance.

Rin shrugged. Something in her brain told her not to speak too much, so she held herself back. "The world is for everybody. So it's art that is for everybody. It's art that everybody can see the all the same, no matter what they think."

He frowned a little, and turned his head back to look at the paintings. He went silent again for a little while, which was fine by her.

Then he said something else. "So… it's somehow an invitation for some collective experience. The world is the subject, and the audience."

"Um, I guess so," said Rin.

She liked the word 'somehow'.

"It's unusual. I often find that student art displays can be a little…" He waved one hand around as he spoke. "…same-y. It's nice to see something that grabs my attention. So you've accomplished that much."

He gave Rin a big smile, which seemed good.

"Okay." Rin narrowed her eyes. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

He kept looking at her art, and didn't say anything else until he got the rest of the way through it, nodding to himself periodically.

"Have you ever sold your art before, Tezuka?" Fukuhara asked suddenly, flipping around so that his back faced the wall of paintings.

"Yes."

"Really?" He raised an eyebrow, apparently surprised. "Are you planning on remaining a student this upcoming year?"

"Yes."

"What are your ambitions for after graduation?"

"I want to paint. I think," she said hoarsely.

"Are you going to stay in Tokyo?"

"Maybe. I'm not _from_ Tokyo. I came here for school. It depends on what." She looked away suddenly, losing track of her words. "I mean, it depends on what I need to do."

"Okay… okay." Fukuhara smiled at her again. "Well, I don't want to leave you in suspense. I'm very interested in your work, Tezuka. I think you have the right attitude for the professional sphere. And you are clearly a very thoughtful artist." He looked down at her. "…And an _intriguing_ person… I have to ask; how did you paint this? How do you paint in general? You use your feet?"

"Almost always."

"Remarkable. I mean it; that's really remarkable. I'm sure you hear it all the time."

"I do."

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to seem diminutive."

"I don't know what that means."

He laughed again, but Rin forgot to.

"Can I speak with you again? There are people I would really like to show this display to."

"Student art isn't for sale," Rin replied.

"Yes, yes, I understand. Though I admit, I do regret that about this exhibition sometimes." Fukuhara scratched behind his head. "Regardless, I would love to have another look at this later and speak with you again. Would you be open to that?"

Rin wasn't sure what to make of him.

"Yes," she said.

"Good. Good, good." He nodded to himself. "I'll tell you what; I'm going to speak with your professor about this display. But I'll meet with you again soon. Would it be alright for you to go briefly leave the campus during the school week?"

"I think so."

"I think that's what we'll do, then." He nodded once more. "Okay. I'm going to be off for now, then." He took a step closer to Rin, smiling and showing his teeth. "I want to say. It was a real pleasure to meet you, Tezuka. Sincerely. I very much enjoyed this. I am excited to keep in touch."

"Bye," said Rin.

Fukuhara seemed to be standing a little taller as he brushed past her. When Rin finally lowered her eyes from him, she saw Yumi and Kichiro standing near wall by her display, apparently having been watching her. Yumi's mascara was running a tiny bit.

Rin looked away from them.

* * *

At eight o'clock at night, or maybe a little bit after, the museum staff had started to pack up the student art, and the students had begun to move it off the walls.

Rin's art was still up on her walls, but they had taken away the rope partitions, so it was open to the whole world again. That bothered her, suddenly, for some reason.

Rin walked back and forth between her own display and Yumi's, whose own paintings were also still hanging on her own walls. She couldn't move her art herself, so she simply had to wait for one of the others to help her.

Yumi kept looking at her own art like she couldn't figure it out. Rin didn't know how that could be. She wondered if Yumi had found her soul.

With a tiny wave, Kichiro looked back to Rin, but only for a second or two. He was standing very close to Yumi, so that their sides were nearly pressed together.

"I'm… really sorry," Kichiro said to her, his voice a bit more higher-pitched than usual.

"Me, too," Yumi replied.

"Is there anything I can do for you…?"

"Probably not."

"I'm not really sure what to do."

"There's nothing for you to do! Come on; it's not your fault."

"Still."

"I mean it."

"I know you do. But still."

Yumi shook out her head a little, getting hair out of her eyes. She had been crying- not much, but just enough. Rin thought it was devastating to listen to.

"Thank you, Kichiro. I know you're worried about me. But I'm okay. It just sucks. I'll get over it."

"It doesn't need to suck. You shouldn't take what he said to heart. He really had no right to say that to you."

"No, he did. But it's not really about him, exactly."

"He's just some asshole. Self-important. He's basically just Tsuchiya with a better workout routine. He doesn't know what he's talking about."

Yumi laughed in a strange way that still seemed sad. "It sucks because he _does_ know what he's talking about. And _I_ know what he's talking about, too. I knew I screwed up focusing on the watercolors so much. Experimenting and everything. I honestly knew that from the beginning. I just…" She mumbled the last part, working herself up.

"Hey… come on. Yumi…"

Kichiro reached out to touch her, and she swatted his hand away.

"Just- just…" she trailed off. "Don't, okay?"

"Okay. Sorry."

"Don't apologize." Yumi turned her head to the side and kissed him. "Can you give me a minute?"

"Oh! Yeah." Kichiro patted her on the back and turned away. "Sorry."

"Hey, I just said don't apologize, idiot."

"Sorry."

She laughed, and waved a hand behind her to playfully smack him. "Go!"

Kichiro smirked as he approached, raising a hand to greet Rin as he walked out of the display and back over to Rin's.

Rin followed him.

"Agh." Kichiro slowed to a stop in front of Rin's paintings and put his hands on his hips. "Mm… really hate to see her upset."

Rin looked at the floor. She didn't really want to talk, but needed to. It was easy to tell the truth to Kichiro, she thought.

"I don't understand what Fukuhara didn't see in her art," she mumbled.

"Neither do I."

"I don't understand what he saw in mine."

"Oh…" His tone surprised her, and she looked up. "You shouldn't let this put a damper on things for you," he said gently. "You really impressed him."

"I know I did."

"Be excited! Hell, _I'm_ excited _for_ you!" He thumped her on the shoulder, which caught her by surprise. "You must have a million things going through your head. How do you feel?"

Rin thought about it for a moment. "I feel like I have a million things going through my head."

"I guess that makes sense," he chuckled.

Rin slumped her shoulders in her usual fashion- then she noticed that he was doing it, too, and tilted her head to look at him. He caught her staring.

"Agh, I'm sorry. I'm trying to be excited." He gave a sad frown. "I've got a lot of things to juggle right now."

"I'm sorry. I can't juggle."

Caught off-guard, he paused, then he shook his head and threw out his arms in front of him.

"Sorry, Rin, I just want to go take care of something. I'm not trying to be a downer. Do you mind?"

"Do I mind what?"

"Just gonna go do something."

He started to walk away, and Rin set her foot down urgently. "What are you doing…?"

Kichiro cracked his knuckles in front of him. "My job."

Rin followed far behind, back to Yumi's display, where she was still standing in front of her art. Her shoulders were slumped, too. Rin leaned against the wall, and Kichiro approached her again.

Yumi groaned. "Hey…"

"Hey." He smacked his lips, aligning himself next to her. "So. Here's my opinion."

"What?" Yumi stopped looking at her art and took a step away.

"I think," said Kichiro, "that your watercolors are naturally evocative, because of your color choice. It's not just about subject. It's expressive because it's bold, but not quite natural. I think it feels like you are taking the most essential and beautiful _elements_ of something natural, and molding it into something expressive and human by focusing on those elements. I think it feels transformative in the kind of way that makes you need to look at it twice. I think you're taking your subject and making it your own, artistically speaking. That's not just really appealing visually, but it's also the fundamental reason that art is compelling in the first place." He clasped his hands together. "That's what I think."

He clenched his teeth and tucked his hands into the pockets of his trousers. He and Yumi both stared at her art for a long time without saying anything, and Rin stood far behind them, not sure what to focus on or what to think. She felt delirious.

Yumi choked up again, then shook out her head and rested it against Kichiro's shoulder, which was easy to do since she was just the right amount shorter than him.

"I… you know, I feel like I want to cry harder, now," said Yumi, a little shakily. "That was really…"

"It's just true. That's all."

"…I love you," said Yumi, eventually

"I love you, too," said Kichiro.

She straightened herself out, then turned Kichiro to face her and wrapped her arms around his shoulders to hug him. They were both smiling; they seemed good at it.

Rin wasn't good at it.

She stood far away from them, leaning against the wall, looking at Yumi's art. She still couldn't figure out what to think.


	9. The Moon and the Earth

**The Moon and the Earth**

Thin glass double-doors were the only things standing between Rin and the big grey lobby of a skyscraper, which stretched up so high you could barely see the top.

The doors had to be pulled in order to be opened. Each had a handle near the center- little silver bars at torso-level. Rin was trying very hard, unsuccessfully, to open one of them.

She forced her shoulder into the glass. Her sleeve, tied off at the end, dangled through the loop of the door handle, but the end of her arm wouldn't fit through.

Rin's breath momentarily stained the door. Little clouds on the glass.

A loud grunt escaped from deep in her chest. She raised a knee and pressed it into the glass, but stumbled backward, almost falling back onto the sidewalk. Her sleeves flapped like flags in the wind and smacked her in the stomach.

Both feet planted on the ground, she focused intently on the lobby of through the glass, just on the other side of the door.

Her toes wiggled around inside her shoes, which were too tight. Her toenails were cut. Yumi had cut them, and painted them, too. Lime green. It wasn't the kind of thing Rin normally did, but Yumi offered, and for some reason Rin agreed to it. She didn't mind the color, but that decision puzzled her anyway, and she had spent a long time trying to understand her own reasoning for agreeing to it.

Rin stood on one foot again and raised it to the door, pressing the bottom of her shoe against the glass door. She almost managed to wedge her foot through the door handle before losing her balance and being forced to lower her foot again.

A tall woman in a black pantsuit walked out of the lobby, opening up the glass door and stepping through. The door shut behind her, but she hesitated for a moment at the sight of Rin, who did not return her glance. Instead, she puffed out her chest and raised her foot in the air again, pressing it into the door and struggling to wedge it behind the handle.

"Miss? Excuse me, miss?" the woman stammered quietly.

Rin hopped on the balls of her feet to keep from losing her balance.

"Miss! Excuse me!" the woman repeated herself more forcefully that time. "What- what on Earth are you doing…?" Defeated, Rin lowered her foot from the door to look at her, and the woman froze in place, eyeing her up and down. "…Oh! I'm… um, I'm sorry…" Raising a finger, she pointed past Rin's shoulder, to the silver handicap door button on the wall next to the door. "Um, there's a… a button…"

Rin stared blankly at it. "I know."

"…Oh. Excuse me." The woman nodded a few times, but regardless, she seemed to be more confused than before. "…Um, why didn't you… use it…?"

Rin turned her attention to the door handle again, the shape of which seemed to perfectly accommodate the shape of her foot. "I didn't think I needed it," she replied honestly.

"Oh." The woman pursed her lips, which were a dark shade of red because of her lipstick. "Well. If it's all the same to you, it would really be better if you didn't touch the glass. It's easy to scuff it up." She cupped her hands together, drumming her fingers on her knuckles.

The glass didn't seem particularly scuffed up to Rin's eye, though she examined it thoroughly to make sure.

Regardless, she didn't protest. She probably just didn't see it the right way.

After a pause, the woman returned to the entrance of the building, opening the door and holding it for Rin. Not to keep the strange lady waiting, she obediently stepped through, but she kept focusing on the handle anyway. She _could_ have opened it her way, but apparently that was wrong…

The two of them went in opposite directions, and Rin headed directly for the elevator. The other woman, Rin observed, kept an eye on her until she disappeared from sight.

Rin had been instructed to go to the thirty-second floor. She hit the button with her shoulder and pushed it on her second try, and the elevator rattled its way up without stopping a single time to let anyone else on. So it was just her.

The thirty-second floor was a lot like the first. Just narrower, with more walls. A pretty woman wearing a lot of makeup sat at the desk at the center of the room, and Rin approached her with a determined frown.

"Hi!" the receptionist chirped, sitting up straight at the first sign of a visitor. "Can I help you, ma'am?"

"Yes," Rin declared with feigned certainty. "I'm Rin Tezuka. I am here to meet with Mr. Fukuhara." She paused. "For a meeting."

They stared at each other for a moment. The receptionist pressed her lips together into a tight smile, which Rin did not return.

Then she reached for the phone. "Rin Tezuka is here," she mumbled into the receiver, looking back at forth between her desk and Rin's face. "Would you like me to…?"

The receptionist and Rin were staring at each other again. It seemed like Rin had put her off somehow, but she had no idea how, and the thought of it made her restless. She looked past the reception desk to the window, where another skyscraper across the street blocked almost the entire view from the thirty-second floor. Rin wondered why the window would even be there in the first place. If she worked there, she doubted she would ever deliberately look out of it.

The voice on the other end of the phone at the desk chattered something Rin couldn't quite hear, and the receptionist listened to it attentively before sitting up and instructing, "You can go ahead in. He's ready for you."

She did as she was told. As an afterthought, she thanked the receptionist on her way out, who smiled in response. Or, at least, Rin assumed that it was in response, since she had never stopped smiling in the first place.

Rin's invitation to the office had come a week prior. At the time, Rin had forgotten Mr. Fukuhara's name. But she had been unable to forget what he'd said to her. What he'd said about her art.

For the meeting, she had worn the nicest clothes she had. Men's formal wear. Her mother had packed it, she recalled, even though Rin herself had said she would never have the occasion to wear it. Yumi had tied the sleeves off, and stuffed her into too-tight close-toed shoes, covering up her lime green toenails.

Nobody in the world except for Yumi and Rin herself even knew that she had green toenails. Rin wondered briefly what her mother would think about that.

She stared at her shoes as she walked to the office where Fukuhara was waiting for her. She didn't look up until he enthusiastically declared, "Tezuka! You're here! Have a seat."

He seemed happy to see her. She wasn't sure what to make of it.

"Okay," she replied thoughtfully.

Fukuhara's desk, Rin observed as she took a seat across from him, was large, and cluttered, and made him look quite small by comparison. It wasn't a formal meeting- at least as far as Rin had been told- but he was wearing a fancy suit anyway, and shiny cufflinks, and a tie, and an expensive-looking ring. Rin decided it must be a wedding ring, which made her curious what his wife was like, and how many pantsuits she owned.

"Thank you for taking the time to meet with me, especially on a weekday." Fukuhara folded his hands on his desk as he prattled on. "I know it's around the end of the school year, and you must be very busy. I hope I haven't pulled you away from anything."

"You haven't pulled me away from anything." Rin slumped back in her chair as she spoke, avoiding eye contact. "This is more important than any other work I have to be doing."

"Fair enough. I appreciate your enthusiasm." He paused uncertainly. "Can I get you something to drink? Tea, maybe? Or something else?" He pointed a finger straight up in the air, toward the ceiling. "I have an espresso maker."

She wasn't thirsty, but she considered the proposition anyway. "Do you have a straw?"

The question surprised him enough to make him hesitate, but he came around quickly. "Um… yes, I can get you a straw."

"Then I'll have tea." That seemed right.

He seemed to think so as well, and nodded approvingly before putting in the request over his intercom.

But these were just formalities. Rin was no good at them, and, fortunately, Fukuhara seemed to have no patience for them. So they moved on quickly.

As they waited for Rin's tea, he asked her, "Can I show you something?"

Without waiting for a response, he stood from his chair and walked over to one of the shelves next to his desk. A few little trinkets rested on it, but he was interested in one in particular- a small circular tile, decorated with a pattern of a tree in a dreary brown and grey. He sat back down with the tile in hand, propping it up on the desk so Rin could look at it.

"It's ceramic tile," he explained. "Impressive, isn't it?"

"Did you make that?" asked Rin.

He smirked like he was going to laugh, but he didn't. "No. That was a gift. I received it from an artist named Ryoko Yoshida just last year. She's a close friend of mine." He rested the tile on the desk so he could fold his hand together. "I met her eight… actually, almost nine years ago now, at a student exhibition. Much like the one where I met you… albeit slightly smaller. At the time, she was painting, but she has always been more interested working in three dimensions- that's what she told me at the time, too. I could tell from the beginning that small exhibitions would be stifling her talents. And I was much newer at this at the time, mind you."

Rin had no idea who he was talking about, or how to respond, so she simply focused on the tile lying face-up on the desk while Fukuhara waited for her to say something.

The tea arrived. The receptionist from earlier brought it into the office with an awkward smile. This time, Rin tried to return it. The tea was bitterer than she had expected, but she didn't say anything about it.

She didn't say anything at all, in fact. Neither she nor Fukuhara said anything for what felt like a long time. The receptionist returned to whatever work she was doing outside. In the interim, Fukuhara took a small sip of his tea, pinching the handle of his cup with two fingers.

He smiled uncertainly at Rin as he set the cup down cautiously on its little plate. "…Anyway… would you care to guess where she is now? Yoshida?"

She wanted to answer him that time, and so she looked him in the eye and proclaimed, "No."

"London. For another month now." He grinned. "Then Dublin for another two. Then she'll be spending the rest of the year overseas, in the United States. She is doing a collaborative project with a Senegalese artist, whom she met at an event right here in Tokyo. Back-to-back exhibitions in four cities. Isn't that exciting?"

After a long moment of consideration, Rin tentatively decided to respond with a "Yes" that time.

She smiled as she said it. Squeezing her lips together, like the receptionist outside. Fukuhara traced a finger around the edge of the ceramic tile, then drummed his hand on it.

"Okay," he said firmly. "Let's not beat around the bush. As you know, after the student exhibition closed, I met with your professor about your display, and we had a photographer come in to take some reference images." As he spoke, he stood from the desk to return the tile to his shelf, retrieving in its place a manila folder from on top. "Long story short, I co-own a small- fairly _prominent_ , keep in mind, but nevertheless small- gallery with a close friend of mine here in Tokyo, where we host a number of solo exhibitions every year. But, from time to time, my friend organizes a smaller-scale joint project with several more unknown artists. Much like yourself, I mean. He considers it a public service to help keep our community's art scene alive. It can be an excellent source of exposure." He opened the folder on the desk, revealing his photographs of _world_. Rin watched with narrow eyes as he continued: "I showed him these, and as I expected, he shares my interest in your work. And with a little finagling, I believe there is a chance I could convince him to include you in one of these exhibitions at the gallery. Might you have any interest in doing something like that? Possibly sometime during the next academic year?"

It was a familiar sort of proposition. But a weighty one.

Rin was stricken. "Tell me more."

Fukuhara nodded contemplatively. "Okay, well. While I was going to the trouble of compiling these photographs, I looked through the portfolio you submitted to Admissions for your application to your current school. And after a little digging, I found an article on the exhibition you did last year in high school. I have to say, it's all very promising… but, not current. And, to be honest, not really quite sufficient." He shrugged with one hand. "Point being, if you decide you're interested in this- if you want to work with me to take part in another exhibition- it would be beneficial if you could put together some new material in the coming months. Something for me to present alongside ' _World_ '. And alongside- what was the title of the exhibition you did last summer?"

He dragged her back to Yamaku again, to the dusty old atelier and the dark painting now hanging above her bed. The question felt wrong to her. Out of place.

She answered him truthfully, but with reluctance. And something like guilt. "It didn't have one."

But he didn't seem to care one way or the other. "…Alright, well. Regardless. Putting together something more substantive for me to present to this friend of mine… that would be our next step. Only if you would be comfortable committing to exhibiting your work again moving forward."

Comfortable was the wrong word for Rin. That much she knew. But the last exhibition had left her without a direction. And she had made up her mind long before she had put on that suit, or come in to the office, or painted her toenails green.

"I don't understand. I don't…" She stopped herself from trailing off- from losing track of the most important question. "What do you need from me?"

"I'm not asking you to sign anything. Just… if anything, consider this an informal offer. A trial run, if you would even want to call it that. I just need you to work with me." He seemed dissatisfied with that at first, and before Rin could reply, he continued on. "My interest is in helping you to cultivate your potential. And my hope is that, if you can get started out on the right foot, so to speak, you will be in a better position to capitalize on that when the time comes to consider your options after your schooling is finished. You have something unique, Tezuka. And I would like to foster what could be a very rewarding professional relationship. If you'd let me, with time, I really believe we could make something really great together."

"So you want me to paint for you."

"I do."

"And you want me to work on a new exhibition."

"At present, I just need a little more material from you so I have something to verify your… talents," he explained slowly. "Listen. Your schooling is your primary concern right now. I fully understand that, and I want you to be able to prioritize those obligations. But if you work with me now, you will just have more options available to you moving forward." He leaned in close to look into Rin's eyes, which were wrenched wide open. "Now is the time to be asking yourself- what do you want from your future?"

There was something unusual about Fukuhara. Something about the way he looked at her. Like he was seeing something that wasn't there.

Rin lost herself for a moment.

"I want to be an artist. Can you do that for me?"

Fukuhara did not hesitate this time. "That's my job."

"Then I want your help."

"I am glad to hear that."

"But my family will want me to go back after the school year ends."

"It's not a problem. Do what you need to do. We can work out a timetable that works best for you."

Rin thought about the coming year. She had almost said, 'my family will want me to go back home'. Something stopped her.

She shuffled her green toes around in her shoes. "I'll contact you again. When I can."

"I'll be looking forward to it," Fukuhara replied with a smile.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Rin left the office with Fukuhara's business card. She finished her tea before she did. Her knotted sleeves dangled at her sides.

On her way out of the building, Rin shoved her chest against the metal button next to the entrance, and the double doors opened for her automatically. She hovered in the doorway for a second or two, one foot still inside, and then she disappeared into the crowd outside.


End file.
